The day before Valentine’s in 2017, my boyfriend (now husband) and I drove out to the western end of the Valley and got caught in the crawling queue of traffic, back when the crowd restrictions allowed for one lane of Northside to be used for parking/pedestrians and you could shoot from the southern bank of the Merced River. We never got the chance to get out of the car, but we got to see the fall as we were passing through the viewing area, and I remember exclaiming, “Oh, wow!” as we caught sight of it.

I didn’t expect purple sandstone. I didn’t expect pink and yellow. Orange? Sure. Red? That’s the characteristic sandstone of the Southwest, amirite? White, sure, I’ll give you that. But I even saw bits of green and blue muddled into the sandstone when it was wet. I mean, they weren’t the prettiest blues and greens…but they were there. I swear they were there.

I struck out on 20 February, 2021, with a vague idea of where I wanted to end up. I’d scoped a place nearby about a year prior, and deemed it too far East; but it was a good starting point. I went with the intention of scouting the new area, and the notion that if I did shoot it, I’d shoot the same photo as everyone else—the close-cropped portrait of the waterfall and the rocks immediately around it, and nothing else. I’d shoot it just to have it.

The whole gym was turned to face the announcer, and with each number drawn the people around me would sigh, grumble, and mutter under their breath, while the lucky one got to announce whether or not they accepted. Of course, everyone accepted. Though it wasn't peak season, far more people left disappointed than successful. Including myself.