In April of 2000, I attended a banking conference in San Diego. I tacked on another 5 days of personal time to travel up to Yosemite to see the very full waterfalls that occur in April from all the snowmelt. The waterfalls did not disappoint, but the weather sure did.

I had booked what I thought was a room in Curry Village, but it turned out to be a tent cabin, essentially a large tent raised up on a platform. Not what I was wanting and given the weather outlook for cold and rain, I was able to move to a Yosemite Lodge cabin that they somehow had available.

That proved to be one of the best decisions of my life. For 4 days and nights, it did nothing but rain. I was unwilling to give up on my visit as I've always felt that the worst day in Yosemite is still better than the best day just about anywhere else. Beyond feeling wet and miserable, rain does wonderful things to the landscape and braving it can produce some wonderful results. I had the right GoreTex jacket, but just jeans for the bottom half. I would shoot for a couple of hours, getting totally soaked, come back in to my cabin and spread out the clothes over the radiators and dry them out. Then go back out in the rain, rinse and repeat. I could not have done this staying in the Curry Village tent cabins.

As for the photograph, I made this image along the rushing Merced River near the base of Bridalveil Fall. The heavy overcast and steady rain made for a long exposure, especially since I was using a large 8x10 view camera. The flowing water over the rocks was turned a nice silky smooth. I had a number of adjustments to make in the exposure and development of the negative due to the filter used and reciprocity failure (see notes below).

Zone VI Cherrywood 8x10 View Camera, Rodenstock 360mm f/6.8, Kodak TXP 4164 Film, EI 320Low values (EV 7 2/3) placed on Zone III, High Values fell on Zone VI, Wratten Gel #11 filter, Indicated exposure 1 sec @ f/51, adjusted to 3 sec @ f/51 for 1.5X filter factor, adjusted to 9 sec @ f/51 for reciprocity failure. The development plan was originally N, adjusted to N-1 for reciprocity failure, HC-100, Dil. B, Gitzo 1349 Mountaineer Carbon Fiber Tripod, Gitzo G1276 Ballhead, Pentax Zone VI modified Digital Spot Meter