Wildflowers in Carrizo Plain National Monument, April 2006
This could be a great wildflower year in some parts of California, so although I’m on vacation this week I thought I’d pass along some resources, places you can go to find out where the flowers are blooming.
First there’s this map from NOAA depicting rainfall in the western U.S. since September. Note that Death Valley and other areas of the Mojave Desert have received over 150 percent of normal rainfall, so we can expect good flower displays in those areas. Other traditional wildflower hotspots like Anza-Borrego, Antelope Valley, and the Carrizo Plain have also received above-average precipitation.
Carol Leigh has created two great resources for flower photographers: Carol Leigh’s California Wildflower Hotsheet, and the CalPhoto group on Yahoo. Both feature reader reports of wildflowers from around the state. I’ve been a Calphoto member for a long time and it’s a great place to find information about photographing many California subjects, not just wildflowers.
DesertUSA is another valuable site, with wildflower reports for Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas as well as California. Also check out the Theodore Payne Foundation’s Wildflower Hotline.
These links just scratch the surface of what’s available, so if you know of other good sources please feel free to post them in the comments.
Of course I’ll keep you up to date on what’s happening around the Yosemite area in this blog. Right now it’s hard to say what kind of wildflower year it will be in the Merced River Canyon west of Yosemite. We’ve had above-average precipitation, but we need a stretch of warm, clear weather to get the bloom rolling.
As a reminder, I won’t be posting a critique this week, so I’ll post the next critique on March 16th or 17th. See you then!
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"Ogden Lake II" by Lou Hablas
This week’s photograph, by Lou Hablas, is from O’Leno State Park in Florida. Did you know they had fall color like that in Florida? I sure didn’t.
Lou said that he made this photograph on an overcast and sometimes rainy day while on a hike with his family. That weather provided perfect conditions for this subject. I mentioned last week how soft light enhances colors and color contrasts, but it has another benefit: simplification. Forests have random, chaotic configurations of branches, trunks, and leaves. Sunlight filtering through the trees creates splotchy patterns of light and dark, further adding to the visual confusion. Soft, even light helps simplify such scenes.
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Tags: critique, Landscape Photography, Michael Frye, Photography
Posted in Landscape Photography, Weekly Critiques | 9 Comments »
Yosemite Association's web cam, Saturday, 5:48 p.m.
As I was worked in my office in Mariposa Saturday afternoon I kept an eye on the weather outside, as well as the satellite and radar images on the web, just in case the storm might clear before sunset. It looked like there was a chance, but only a small chance. I had a lot of work to do. I decided to stay home rather than make the two-hour round trip to Yosemite Valley.
Just before sunset I noticed a sliver of clear sky to the west, then sun hitting some trees on a nearby ridge. I looked at the Yosemite Association’s web cam and saw the image you see above. Ouch! Oh well, I guess you can’t always be in the right place at the right time. The moral of the story is that I should always take the chance, even if the odds are low, because it’s precisely those situations when truly spectacular light can occur. I hope some of you were there and captured some great images!
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Tags: Landscape Photography, Michael Frye, Photography, Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley
Posted in Landscape Photography, Yosemite Photo Conditions | 12 Comments »
"A Walk Along the Cascades" by Charlene Burge
This week’s photograph, by Charlene Burge, is from the Plumas National Forest near the northern end of my home mountain range, the Sierra Nevada. The colorful plants along the creek are called wild rhubarb or Indian rhubarb. They’re found in a few places in and around Yosemite, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover this photo and see that they grow further north as well. It’s hard to tell from this image, but their leaves are quite large, sometimes more than a foot in diameter. Since they’re colorful in the fall, and grow along creeks, these plants make great photo subjects.
Color is one of the most appealing things about this image. The reds and oranges of the rhubarb draw the eye and contrast with the greens of the grasses and trees. The soft light of an overcast day worked perfectly for this subject. Sunlight would have been too harsh, creating bright highlights and dark shadows that would have overwhelmed the colors.
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Tags: critique, Landscape Photography, Michael Frye, Photography
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Poppies, tri-colored gilia, and a gray pine, March 2009
After a long dry stretch we’ve encountered some wet weather. Rain fell yesterday, and a more significant storm arrived today. This one is cold enough to produce snow in Yosemite Valley. The storm is predicted to end tomorrow morning, and whenever a system like this breaks there’s a chance of seeing classic Yosemite clearing storm conditions. The forecast calls for “unsettled” weather the rest of the week.
A reliable source—namely my frequent workshop assistant Mike Osborne—told me that some poppies, along with a few other flowers, have started to bloom in the Merced River Canyon west of Yosemite. Last year, of course, was a fabulous year for poppies, the best I’ve seen in over 25 years. While it’s unlikely that this year will be as spectacular, we could still have an above-average season since last year’s poppies must have left a lot of seeds, and the ash deposited by the Telegraph Fire of 2008 may still provide left-over benefits. On the other hand, the grass is already quite high and may crowd out the flowers.
I just returned from the NANPA (North American Nature Photography Association) Summit in Reno, Nevada. We heard some great speakers—for example, check out Wild Wonders of Europe, the amazing project co-founded by Friday morning’s keynote speaker, Staffan Widstrand of Sweden.
But the best part of the conference was simply connecting with other photographers. Gary Crabbe told me the astounding story of his freakish accident last year. He literally fell off a forty-foot cliff in the dark. Jed Manwaring entertained us with tales of assisting high-powered advertising photographer Jim Sugar. I traded books with Brenda Tharp and Stephen Ingram, exchanging my new book, Digital Landscape Photography, for an advance copy of the revised edition of Brenda’s (deservedly) popular Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography, and Stephen’s beautiful Cacti, Agaves, and Yuccas of California and Nevada.
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Tags: Landscape Photography, Michael Frye, Photography, Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley
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"Scrub, Before the Dawn" by Barry Hamilton
This week’s photo, by Barry Hamilton, is from White Sands National Monument, New Mexico. It features a simple, strong composition, with a clear focal point—the bush. That bush is too near the left edge of the photograph to qualify for the rule of thirds, but I think it works because it’s balanced by the ripples in the dune and the pink clouds. Yet another successful violation of the rule of thirds!
The pre-dawn glow is beautiful. Even though the sun wasn’t up yet, the light has a strong direction from the right, bringing out the texture of the dune. (Soft light with direction is one the subtleties I talk about in this article from Outdoor Photographer.) The pinks, golds, and blues form a pleasing color palette. Viewed larger you can see some nice details, like the animal tracks in the sand.
Barry says he found this shrub while scouting the day before. In my critique from two weeks ago I talked about the importance of flexibility, of adapting to conditions when the light and weather don’t meet your expectations. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan; planning and scouting are still vital components of landscape photography. The more intimately you know a location, the better your photographs will be. When traveling I’d rather spend two weeks in one area, getting to know the best viewpoints and understanding how the light changes, than spend two days apiece in seven different spots.
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Tags: critique, Landscape Photography, Michael Frye, Photography
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In my post about Horsetail Fall from February 1st I said that the ideal scenario would include a stretch of warm clear days during the peak window of light. Well we’re in that window, the weather is warm and clear, and there’s plenty of water in the fall, so conditions are perfect. It looks like somebody’s going to get some good Horsetail photos this week. The one caveat is that clouds have partially blocked the light the last few evenings. Even with mostly clear skies, a few thin clouds to the west near sunset can dull the glow. Also, the same conditions that have been bringing lots of fog to the Central Valley can create low-hanging clouds along the ridges just west of Yosemite Valley, blocking the light late in the day.
This warm weather has encouraged some flowers to bloom in the Sierra foothills, but so far I haven’t seen or heard about any poppies. Normally I wouldn’t even be thinking about poppies this early, but last year I saw them blooming on February 21st. Of course, that turned out to be the best poppy year ever in the Merced River Canyon west of Yosemite (see my posts from February, March, and April of 2009), and it’s unlikely that will happen again this year.
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My latest article for Outdoor Photographer magazine, The Digital Zone System, appears in the March issue, which is just hitting newsstands and mailboxes now. Click here to read it online.
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Fog, by Joe Navratil
The image I chose for the first critique in this series was made with a 4 x 5 view camera; this one was captured with a Canon Powershot SD1000—a point-and-shoot. But great photos can be made with any equipment, whether a 4 x 5, digital SLR, point-and-shoot, or pinhole camera. Vision is always more important than equipment.
Joe Navratil captured a great moment here, with the sun breaking through fog and silhouetting stately oaks. There’s a wonderful, optimistic mood to the photograph. The composition is pretty simple, and simplicity is always a good thing. One problem is that the main focal points—the sun and the largest tree—are centered. Now I’m not a stickler for the rule of thirds, or any rule for that matter. As Edward Weston said, “To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.” But the rule of thirds reminds us that photographs are usually more interesting if you place the main subject off-center—like a third of the way from the left or right edge of the frame. And I think that applies here: this image would be more dynamic if the main tree wasn’t centered.
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Tags: critique, HDR, Landscape Photography, Michael Frye, Photography
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Sunrise from Tunnel View, Sunday morning
In my last post I wished for the storm to clear right around sunset on Sunday. It didn’t quite work out that way—it cleared at sunrise instead. My private workshop student and I photographed a beautiful sunrise from Tunnel View, then moved to Cathedral Beach and Swinging Bridge. I always hope for mist, as it adds so much mystery and mood to photographs of Yosemite Valley. Sunday we had almost too much mist; massive cliffs like El Capitan were completely obscured for long stretches of time. But I’m not complaining! It was a great morning.
But where were all the photographers? We saw only a few other tripods all morning—and it was a weekend. Maybe they’re all waiting to come next week for Horsetail Fall.
Tags: Landscape Photography, Michael Frye, Photography, Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley
Posted in Yosemite Photo Conditions | 10 Comments »
