The last 4×5″ negatives of the June 9, 1962 sleeve contain images of the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls.
Joel used red and yellow filters to tone the bright blue skies down. It is a common tool in the arsenal of the B&W film photographer, but in this case, Joel overdid it and the sky turned almost black with some loss of detail at the top.
Joel is keeping the camera and tripod stationary for this exercise and I believe he used his 15″ and 20″ telephoto lenses to get these shots.
Still, Joel had sufficient material to print one of these Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls out in 11×14″ format.
If one looks carefully, one can see the cars at the tree line with people walking around. There’s a VW Transporter visible between the other station wagons.
For the next images of the Lower Yosemite Falls, Joel moved closer to the tree line. There’s just too much filtering to make these images workable as print material.
The last three images with the heavy filtering lose a lot of their appeal. Joel will take these shots again on one of his later trips. Keep in mind there was no instant gratification at that time. One had to develop the film before getting an idea of what one got accomplished.
Cheers !
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 
2 responses to “Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls, JFC, 1962”
Pictures 4-6 appear to be shot at night maybe using an infrared lens, like the one he used at the COP Bonfire. It almost looks like there may have been a bright moon. I think you can see a set of stars (North Star) above the water fall. Very interesting shots.
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Thanks Paul for the suggestion. Interesting shots indeed !
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