Dawn Of A New Day

Dawn Of A New Day, originally uploaded by www.bazpics.com.

By now most of you who regularly visit my stream will know that other than shooting pics of Babo, Wage and the rest of the Uglydolls I tend to travel a lot with work.

While away I enjoy exploring the places in other parts of the world that obviously are now on my doorstep, I used to always say "I never know if I'll ever get the chance to see it again", and that kinda drives me to get up and go (normally leaving at stupid hours, and returning at even more stupid hours) when I have a weekend free.

Now, there's exploring and then there's my version of exploring - take my trip to Glacier National Park in Montana last year as an example, 1800 miles covered in 42 hours, and that included a few hikes and hundreds if not thousands of photos.

Nothing beats a great sunrise or sunset shot, if you need further proof just pop into my "In Search of Sunrise and Sunset" set and check out some of the others I've captured over the years in various locales around the world.

Anyhoo, back to the picture at hand, yesterday I left the hotel shortly before 2am and made my way over to Yosemite National Park in California (without a doubt one of the most awesome places I've ever visited, which Mireille got to experience with me last year too).

Sunrise was expected at 7.14am, so I planned to be in the park a good hour and fifteen minutes ahead of the game. My vantage point was very clear from the beginning of my planning, Glacier Point Overlook, why? Simple, you're over 7000ft up in the air, have a stunning view directly across the valley towards Half Dome and his buddies, and more importantly it's a complete rarity for the road still to be open at this time of year due to snowfall. There was a little snow in the forests to the side of the road, but the road was completely clear, just a few small icy patches at that time of night, but even without the snow it was bitterly cold up there!

Open, yup, it sure was and up the winding road I went, arriving at the Glacier Point Carpark in the cover of complete darkness, minus the pre-dawn light being shed by the almost full moon.

Now, with the positioning of where I was and what I was shooting, I knew that getting a shot of the sun breaching the mountain tops would mean sitting patiently for many hours, so instead my aim was to capture the light beginning to breach the mountain tops and then some of the early light flooding into the valley.

Here's one of the first shots of the light emerging over what in this shot is simply a silhouette but is one hell of an awe inspiring view in daylight hours.