I spent years chasing the idea of that early‑season Tuolumne light — the luminous, impossible glow that appears for only a few minutes each spring. I made trip after trip and never saw it. Not once. Still, the vision stayed with me: a clean, quiet wash of first light sweeping across the meadow, the kind of moment that feels both fleeting and eternal.
Then, more than a few years ago, while going through old transparencies, I found it. The photograph I had been trying to make for so long was already there on a 4x5 chrome. I had made it years earlier, had a scan done, adjusted it in Photoshop, and forgotten the whole thing. It wasn’t until I looked carefully — really looked at it with fresh eyes — that I realized the light I’d been chasing was already mine.
I opened the old scan and immediately knew it needed to be a pano. I made a quick adjustment, cropped it to match the way the scene had always lived in my imagination, and moments later the image revealed itself.
It reminded me of something essential to my vision: sometimes the photograph arrives before the understanding does. Sometimes you make the image long before you recognize its place in your story. And sometimes the mountains give you exactly what you’re looking for — you just need time to finally see it.
