My first attempt at capturing the Firefall in Yosemite was in 2013. I did my research with the help of photographers that had experience capturing this phenomenon, like Michael Frye, who is definitely the go to guy for this event. While the lighting effect happened, there was no water for the light to play off of. While I had seen photos from previous years, I really had no idea how amazing it could be.
I made plans to go to Yosemite about a month ago, first planning to leave Thursday the 18th, but changing to Wednesday the 17th after checking the weather forecast. I arrived at the part at 11:30, to fully overcast skies. I drove around to verify my location, then went to check into the hotel. I went back to my spot, on Southside Drive, at 2:00 and started surveying locations. There was one other car there, I was surprised there were not more.
During the next 3 hours, I watched 5 other cars pull up, photographers got out, walked to a few locations, then looked at the grey skies and walked away. During that time, I set up my camera, covered it with an umbrella, took some short walks and a very short nap. All this time, I was looking for a hint that the clouds were going to clear in time for the effect.
At 5:15, one of the earlier photographers showed up for a second time. We talked for a couple of minutes about how it did not look like a good night for the Firefall, and how Thursday was looking good. We said good bye, he spend a few minutes checking out another choice location, then got in his car and drove away. I was the only one standing there again, and started thinking about dinner.
About 3 minutes after the last photographer left, I noticed a hint of brownish-orange on one cloud behind El Capitan. I thought my eyes were playing with me and looked at some of the other clouds which were still various shades of grey. I started walking towards my camera, and the waterfall started to get a slight glow. By the time I got the umbrella off, the glow started really picking up and I started shooting.
I was shocked at how bright the glow was, with mist coming far away from the fall and blowing upward and over El Cap. After a couple of minutes, it died down a little, then came back glowing even brighter for another 2 minutes. Then, the rock turned grey, and the glow was gone. It lasted for about 4 minutes total.
While I was shooting, a car, with two people in it, parked and started trying to quickly set up a single camera in time to get the shot (something I had done numerous times in my past), one guy gave instructions while the other fiddling with the tripod. A few other people arrived over the next 20 minutes with stories of how they were at Valley View, Tunnel View, or some other location, saw the sun burst through, and raced for the Southside Drive location, but the experience just did not last long enough.
I went back to the same spot on Thursday, and this time, about 100 people showed up. The Thursday show was also amazing, but I will never forget the Wednesday event. I was really fortunate to be there, considering I almost left a couple of times, but I really had nothing better to do; until dinner that is.
