Announcements

My Best Images of 2023: the Nominees

Happy New Year! Once again I’m inviting you, my faithful blog readers, to help me choose my best photographs from the past year. I’ve posted 45 of my favorite images from 2023 below, in chronological order. After you look through these, please use the form at the bottom of this post to list your ten favorites.

Voting is closed! I’ll be posting the results soon.

You don’t have to list your ten favorites in any order; just pick up to ten images. (The numbers are in the captions underneath the photographs. Also, you can click on the images to see them larger.) Once the votes are in I’ll post the top ten or twelve on this blog.

As always, I reserve the right to override the votes if one of my favorites gets panned. But I’ve rarely had to exercise this power because my readers have excellent taste. 🙂

Thanks for your input — I appreciate your help!

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Merry Christmas!

Half Dome, Glacier Point, and the Merced River at night, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Half Dome, Glacier Point, and the Merced River at night, Yosemite NP, California

To all of you who celebrate the day, Claudia and I wish you a very Merry Christmas! We hope you have a wonderful holiday, full of peace, joy, and the love of family and friends.

I made this photograph on a magical, misty, snowy December night in Yosemite two years ago. I loved the pattern of clouds, with Orion poking through. It was such a beautiful night – but cold! I hope you’re someplace warmer tonight.

— Michael Frye

Frames of Reflection Webinar Tomorrow


 

Tomorrow, December 7th, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, I’ll be one of the presenters in a free webinar hosted by the Out of Chicago team called Frames of Reflection: Unveiling Stories of 2023. I’ll be joining several other instructors for this event, including Kristin Ryan, Nick Page, Charlotte Gibb, and David Akoubian, and we’ll each be sharing a story about a photograph from the past year. Click here to register.

And if you can’t attend live, the webinar will be recorded and posted on the Out of Chicago blog.

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Join Me at the Out of Grand Teton Photo Conference!


 

I’m excited to be joining the Out of Chicago team for another photo conference – this time in the Tetons! This is such an amazing and beautiful area, and I’m looking forward to going back. I’m also looking forward to teaching alongside a wonderful group of co-instructors – people like Jennifer Renwick, Nick Page, Charlotte Gibb, David Kingham, Eric Bennett, Chrissy Donadi, Joseph Rossbach, and many more.

We’ll be staying right inside the park at the Jackson Lake Lodge, with great views of the Tetons right from the grounds, plus a good chance of seeing moose in the willow flats below the lodge. And it’ll be a short drive from there to most of the best locations in the Tetons.

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Gratitude

Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California

Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I know most people around the world don’t celebrate this holiday, or do so in a different form, or on a different day.

But regardless of whether you honor the traditions of this particular day, I think there’s value in gratitude – to giving thanks for all the things we have to be grateful for. We really should do that every day, but it’s good to have that reminder once a year.

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Lightroom Webinar: Processing High-Contrast Photos

Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California

Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California

High-contrast images can be challenging to process. How do you both darken highlights and lighten shadows, without making the image look too flat, weird, or over-processed?

On August 26th I’ll present a live webinar where I’ll demonstrate how to tackle this challenge. I’ll take you step-by-step through processing one or more high-contrast photographs, where you’ll learn powerful yet simple techniques for balancing contrast, while keeping the image lively and natural-looking. Here’s a partial list of the topics we’ll cover:

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