06/14/2026
Here's a little backstory about this photo. A few years ago I was doing a campaign for Sony to showcase the A7RV camera to basically highlight its features. I had full autonomy to go where I pleased and do what I wanted for this project so of course I chose Yosemite, because why not?
Well my goal was to go into a very wet Yosemite after a heavy snowmelt and focus on some extreme reflections all across the park. Turns out, the day I planned to do this, the park decided that would be the perfect day to burn a lot of dead wood scattered across the park.
If you aren't a photographer, just trust me when I tell you that smoke is not your friend when capturing photos outdoors. So this put me in a dilemma since I left LA at 3am to get the proper lighting for this Yosemite set and now much of the park was going to be unshootable.
So I drove in anyway and just before I got to the tunnel that leads into the park, I saw this view. Remember I got here before sunrise so the blues of predawn were really popping but in this scenario, the smoke actually created this stencil like effect. I drove by the spot then comprehended what I had just seen and decided to pull off and turn back.
There was no way that I could let this moment go to waste. So that is the backstory of this photo. As far as the shoot goes, I ended up hiking the mist trail which turned out to be a better decision as I could really highlight how the camera handled water and showcase its ability to quickly autofocus on rapid fire panorama shots.
Overall it was a great day, but it just goes to show that you can map everything out one way, but sometimes you gotta be ready to pivot and when you do, sometimes better things come from it.
