Half Dome, Evening, From Olmstead Point
1959
As Ansel wrote in his book Yosemite, the experience of watching the sun rise and set over the valley is truly indescribable.
«If you were to give me the pleasure of showing you Yosemite Valley for the first time,» he writes, «I know just how I would want to do it.» Up before dawn to watch the sun rise from nearby Glacier Point, «you would lean against the railing, trying to see down into the shadows for the first sight of something whose descriptions you never quite believed… Soon the shadows in which we stand will be swept away as the sun bursts upon us with an atomic blaze over the helmet curve of Half Dome.» In this image, as the sunlight recedes, the «atomic blaze» becomes a firelight glow.