Near the bottom of Upper Yosemite Fall, there’s a big tree right in front of the falling water. Marian noticed it and wanted me to take a picture. Naturally I took dozens of shots of “Marian’s tree,”¹ and then spent some time picking through them and agreeing with Marian on which was best.
But I said we got lucky with the light on our trip. The next morning was clear and brilliant, and I got a terrific view of the morning rainbow on Yosemite Falls. I was upwards of a mile away, unfortunately, but I still got a nice look. All the other pictures got tossed out, and this one rose to the top of the heap. Try that with your 8×10 view camera and your black-and-white glass plates, Ansel Adams!
¹I’m willing to bet that millions of people think of it as “their” tree, but no matter. For us, it’s Marian’s tree.
Here’s the same tree without the rainbow. This is a sharper picture since I was closer at the time. In fact, Marian and I were both waiting for the rainbow on this morning, and I took a whole bunch of pictures as we tried to convince ourselves that we were seeing a glint of yellow here or a slight bit of green there. But we weren’t. It was too cloudy.
