Photography is Patience and Persistence, and then

[usonian]

cool stuff happens.

This is Half Dome from the Yosemite Conservancy webcam. (All credit to them for the photo.)
https://yosemite.org/

snap:


Yosemite webcams are listed and linked here, along with park info.
https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm
Those are live links, so they go very dark at night.

[George McGovern]

1. Fantastic usonian! I wonder what Ansel Adams would think! Thank You!

[usonian]

2. George, I'm so glad you spotted the magic in this photo.

No idea how rare this is. I check the webcams often to spot wonderful light, or clouds, or the wind blowing Yosemite Falls off its track. Ansel Adams used to wait all day for the light to be just right. Here's a description of his "Moon and Half Dome", taken in 1960 with a Hasselblad camera.

https://www.anseladams.com/story-of-moon-and-half-dome/

You may have seen a copy of his much earlier "Monolith, The Face of Half Dome", taken in 1927
The story of that is given in "Examples. The Making of 40 Photographs"

I drove from our home to Happy Isles and began an eventful day of climbing and photographing. I had my 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 Korona View camera, with two lenses, two filters, a rather heavy wooden tripod, and twelve Wratten Panchromatic glass plates. Those were the days when I could climb thousands of feet with a heavy pack and think nothing of it. I was twenty-five and weighted about 125 pounds.

That photo was taken from the "Diving Board", some 2000 feet above its base. Lots more in the book.

This year, Glacier Point road is entirely closed for renovation. So, to get the above photo (and the million-to-one rainbow), you have to hike from the Valley to Glacier Point, and then to Sentinel Dome. As NPS puts it:

The quickest way to get to these areas by the following strenuous hikes:

• Glacier Point: The Four Mile Trail is about nine miles round-trip with 3,200 feet of elevation gain.
• Sentinel Dome: From Glacier Point, the hike is about three miles round trip with about 1,000 feet of elevation gain. This is in addition to hiking to Glacier Point, for a total of about 12 miles and over 4,000 feet of elevation gain.

So, the webcam comes in handy.