Home of the Half Dome, the hugest tree on earth, and a whole host of other natural wonders, Yosemite National Park is a feast at the Western frontier!
Yosemite National Park is famous for many things, but most of all for its ancient Giant Sequoias. In 1864, before the park even existed, President Lincoln signed a law protecting Mariposa Grove for 'public use, resort, and recreation'.
While travelling along State Route 41, make sure to stop at Tunnel View. Looking east from Artist Point Trail, you can see El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall rising from Yosemite Valley, with Half Dome in the far distance.
Many hold that Glacier Point is the most spectacular viewpoint in the park. Come here for breathtaking views of Yosemite Valley, including Half Dome, and three of the park's many waterfalls.
The sunbaked granite of El Capitan is a forbidding sight from a distance, and even more so up close. This vertical cliff face, rising up to 3000ft above Yosemite Valley, is one of the most popular rock climbing sites in the US.
This iconic peak is one of the most recognisable sights in Yosemite. With a curved back and a vertical face, it gives the impression of a mountain sliced in half. Once described as 'perfectly inaccessible', today it can be reached by intrepid hikers.
High above Yosemite Valley, just east of El Capitan, is Eagle Peak. This viewpoint marks the highest of the Three Brothers rock formation, comprising the Middle and Lower Brothers
If you fancy a longer walk, the Ottoway Lakes Trail runs west for 29.6 miles from Glacier Point Road towards Lower Ottoway Lake. It's a tough day trip, but well worth it for its stunning views and abundant wildlife.
The native Ahwahneechee people called Yosemite Falls Cholock (The Fall) and believed that the plunge pool at its base was inhabited by the spirits of several witches, called the Poloti.
Many of the lakes in Yosemite are difficult to reach, but the shallow bays of Tenaya Lake make it a popular spot for picnicking, swimming, and canoeing.
Art can change the nature of a place. The real-world scenes of some of history’s most famous artworks have since become sites of spooky significance. Whether through their association with a dark and mysterious artist, or because of their depiction in a particularly atmospheric image, some landscapes are, for one reason or another, haunted by their aesthetic or historical past.
Few paintings are as famed or as feared as American Gothic (1930). Grant Wood’s rustic portrait is infused with a vague sense of heartland darkness. Generations have felt a strange unease in the ambiguous relationship between the two figures and their horror-movie setting.
The real life Dibble House still stands today in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.
Edvard Munch’s iconic picture of human despair has become one of history’s most famous paintings. Its plunging perspective and fiery palette gave expression to modern humanity’s anguish and anxiety.
The intense landscape through which the three figures walk has been identified as a fjord above Oslo, the view being from a road called Valhallveien.
Munch exaggerated the angles of the road to give his painting great drama, but the place is recognizable, and marked in real life by a plaque.
Gustave Courbet’s Burial at Ornans (1849-50) is set in the rural French town of Ornans where the painter was born. The landscape accurately depicts the craggy, low-Alpine features of the Franche-Comte countryside, and each figure is modelled on a real-life inhabitant of the town. Courbet was inspired to paint this scene after the death of his beloved Grandfather Jean-Antoine Oudot in 1849.
But at the extreme left of the painting, his grandfather himself appears, looking down the length of the casket to the open grave. Is he a ghostly attendant at his own funeral?
Parts of the sleepy town of Ornans still look much as they would have done during Courbet’s lifetime, and the cliffs of the Via Ferrata, overlooking the scene from the top of Roche du Mont, are instantly recognizable.
As a journalistic painter reporting from the front-line of two world wars, Paul Nash was exposed to some of history’s grisliest battlegrounds. His response was to paint the landscapes in a surreal tone, the violence enacted on these fields transforming them into horrific, unnatural zones.
He painted The Menin Road (1919) to record the horrors of the Ypres offensives in Belgium.
Though it no longer bears the surreal atmosphere of Nash’s painting, Flanders still bears the weight of its violent past.
Friedrich's landscapes are often heavily contrasted, shadow and light throwing figures into sharp relief. This refines details to simple, powerful shapes, allowing them to function as symbols or allegories.
Here the tendrils of leafless trees give us a haunting, fractured sky.
The eerie mood that Friedrich captured still hangs over the real-life site.
We’re flying, up high above the clouds, covering distance, but also rewinding time.
Let’s glide a bit lower, to where the clouds disperse. We’re in Kyoto, the capital of Japan in the 17th century.
The golden clouds adorning this folding screen isolate the various scenes, but they also have a practical purpose: in a world without electricity, their large golden surfaces had the virtue of reflecting candlelight and lighting rooms.
Under the clouds, the city teems with life, animated by around 1800 figures belonging to all ages and social classes. Each one is painted in a simple style, but retains a unique character. How did these people live their daily lives in Kyoto during the Edo period?
Some of the pictured activities still take place today, such as the parade of traditional floats at the Gion Festival.
Or Sumo wrestling.
While others are a sign of the 17th Century times. Here, a group of people attend the show of a trained monkey.
Then as now, the city was a destination for western visitors. The members of this delegation are depicted with lengthened noses, exotic animals, and showy garments. Travellers from the West, who stirred the inhabitants' and artist’s curiosity.
Alongside these events, the life of the residents flows through its daily routine. Traders display their wares in their stalls along a market street.
And fishermen pursue their catch of the day along the river.
There's much, much more to see! Have you spotted the furyu-odori dance? Visited the Nijo castle? Carry on flying over Kyoto and let yourselves be captured by the life of this tiny, great ancient world, by zooming into the work for yourself.