Room 504 (Ahwahnee Hotel)

About the Artist

Charlotte Gibb is an award-winning and renowned nature and landscape photographer based in Northern California.  She is known for her mastery of "Intimate Landscapes" — small scenes derived from a large landscape. 

The youngest of nine, she spent her early life playing and exploring the rural Northern California mountain area of her childhood home. Her father, an avid mountain climber and nature lover, made sure his kids shared his passion for the outdoors. After his death in a climbing accident, her mother continued to encourage an attachment to nature, ensuring that family vacations were spent outdoors camping, hiking, and exploring.

Charlotte earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She cut her teeth in the advertising business as an art director in the 1990s, then operated her own graphic design firm in the San Francisco Bay Area for decades. Throughout her long career as an artist, her photography was constantly infused in her design work. Her darkroom has since been replaced with digital darkroom tools, and her style has evolved from a somewhat journalistic approach, to one that pays tribute to the natural world.

Charlotte writes and publishes on the subject of photography and creativity, has been a keynote speaker and educator for several national photography events, served as a judge for international and local photography competitions, and exhibits her work throughout California.

She can usually be found tromping with her camera bag in the wilderness areas around the Sierra Nevada range and Yosemite National Park in her home state. 

Story Behind the Image

In 2011, my husband and I celebrated my birthday with a weekend at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley, as we have almost every year since we married. For a birthday present that year, he gifted me a private, half-day guided photography tour with one of the pros from The Ansel Adams Gallery. 

I had practiced photography for decades — mostly street photography with a distinct lean towards photojournalism — but I felt frustrated with my attempts to photograph Yosemite in a way that expressed my deep affection for the place. A half day with an expert changed everything. Mike Reeves, an Ansel Adams Gallery staff photographer, took me on a little photo tour around the Valley to places I’d never ventured. He lent me one of his personal pro lenses and tripod, and from that day forward, I was on a creative path that would change how I saw and photographed the park. It was the perfect birthday present!

Since then, I’ve returned to the Gallery for other workshops and classes, always pushing to expand knowledge of my craft. Through the Ansel Adams Gallery, I continued to learn from the masters of Yosemite photography — Michael Frye, Kieth Walklet, and Charles Cramer. Some of these workshops took me out of my comfort zone. For example, Kerik Koulis taught a platinum/palladium prints workshop, which took me back to memories of working with chemicals in my old darkroom.

This photograph was made some years later when, again, my husband and I were celebrating our anniversary at the Ahwahnee.  I was sitting in our guest room sipping my morning coffee in my bathrobe when I noticed the beautiful light playing across Upper Yosemite Fall. I was mesmerized. I retrieved the longest lens in the camera bag, set up the tripod in the room next to the window and started playing. 

This photograph holds the distinguished honor of being my best photo made while being completely lazy.

Ordering Information

Original photographs are hand made and not all sizes are kept in inventory. 

Special orders from the photographer may take up to 4 weeks for delivery.

Please contact us at info@anseladams.com if you have any questions about shipping and delivery.

Print Size Information

Prices subject to change as editions sells outs.