Saturday 5 May 2012: Super Moon and Moonbows

What a full day we had. We were up at about 4am for sunrise at the famous Tunnel View in Yosemite and saw several tired photographers from our Google+ photowalk group. The sunrise wasn't so hot so everyone quickly moved on to various locations around the park.

We just kept going all day. Everywhere you went in Yosemite there was some great location, reflections in ponds, the river, so amazing.

We met up the group at meal times and then everyone paired up and went on their way. It was fun to end up with other photographers from our group at various places throughout the day.

Hubby and I decided to hike to Vernal Falls via the Mist Trail. It was awesome, but a bit on the crowded side with people. I even managed to get some shots of the falls without getting mist on my lens even though we were soaked! That handy shower cap worked again.

After getting to the top of Vernal Falls we decided to go a different trail down. We took the John Muir trail and ended up putting in almost eight miles by the time we were done!

Because we took so long on the hike, we missed out on meeting up with others at dinner. We decided to get over to Cook's Meadow for shooting the moonbows. The scheduled time for the moonbows were really late and we were already super tired, but I was determined to witness it and photograph it since it is so rare. It's probably the last one of the year.

When we arrived at Cook's Meadow there were hundreds of photographers arriving or already there! Everyone was orderly though and I quickly took up a position and happened to be near a few new friends I made on the photowalk. It was a blast as all of us had never seen a moonbow or done star trails before.

Other people that night got some amazing moonbow shots by moving west or to other locations. Mine is only a partial but I was thrilled to at least get that. This shot is my newbie attempt at doing star trails as well. I can't believe how easy it is, I'm hooked! But we were all so tired and it was already after midnight that I didn't take enough shots to blend them. This is 10 images blended and I should have had 50. I probably wouldn't choose this photo for my blip today as I have better images from the day but I want to remember this night as it was such a wonderful thing to witness and to be one of the hundreds of photographers lined up that night in the meadow.

• viewed 641 times :
• 31 comments :
• show tags

• about pdavidson