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If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you know that I shoot at Bridal Veil creek just about every time I visit Yosemite. It’s different every time but after a while you get to know individual nooks and crannies. This is an image that I made from the bridge over the middle fork last year. Every time I walk by I admire the way the water wraps the shapes of the rocks and the contrasting colors.

During the last Yosemite workshop, I found myself once again looking at this same spot and contemplating shooting it. There was a problem though. A severe January storm had downed tree limbs all over the park. Several of those downed limbs were laying in “my scene.” The offending branches didn’t look to be very heavy so I took off my photo vest and climbed down to the stream and went to work clearing the area. Happy with my work I climbed back up to the bridge and started composing a shot.

Within what seemed to be just a few seconds I heard from a couple of workshop attendees: “Could you go move that other one too?” I’d already doomed myself by setting the precedence so I was pretty much committed. So I took my vest back off, once again, and headed back to the creek.

© Donna Sturla

Upon arrival at “the log” I noticed another “problem.” What appeared, from the bridge, to be just a shard of wood turned out to be much larger and heavier. To make matters worse I couldn’t actually reach it. Since wading in the stream wasn’t going to happen, all I could do was poke at it with another branch. With an audience gathering, failure was not an option so I went to work trying to dislodge the log. After several attempts, Gary came down to help. Neither he or I could get enough leverage to move it individually. Finally, working as a team, we managed to get it shifted enough that the force of the water took care of the rest.

Everyone got a pretty good laugh watching us flail away at the log. Hopefully, our work resulted in some good shots by the group.

Next time, I think I’ll just use Photoshop to clone out the branch.

Cheers