In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog

Happy New Year!

Sunbeams from Tunnel View, spring, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Sunbeams from Tunnel View, spring, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Happy New Year everyone! To all my readers, thank you so much for your support during the past year. Your participation makes writing this blog fun. I have lots of exciting plans for this blog, and look forward to another great year in 2014!

And don’t forget, tomorrow I’ll be posting the nominees for my best photos of 2013, and you’ll get a chance to vote for your favorites and help me pick the top ten. The image above was the top vote-getter from two years ago.

— Michael Frye

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Top Posts of 2013: Moonstruck

Oak tree and lunar eclipse sequence, Mariposa County, Sierra foothills, CA, USA

Oak tree and lunar eclipse sequence, Mariposa County, Sierra foothills, CA, USA

One of my most popular posts this year was a recent one, called Moonstruck. This article focused on how to capture moonrise and moonset photographs, with a discussion about how to predict the moon’s movements, and apps that can help with figuring out the precise position of the sun and moon.

While the Moonstruck article focused on photographing moonrises and moonsets, I’ve also written about photographing by moonlight. Tips for Photographing Lunar Rainbows delves into the specifics of moonlight photography: camera settings, shutter speeds, and how to focus in the dark. And in another post from 2012 I described the experience of photographing lunar rainbows in Yosemite, first with the crowds of photographers in Cook’s Meadow, then along the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail. And then late last year I wrote about my most memorable New Year’s Eve, and how that inspired me to make a photograph of the Three Brothers by moonlight.

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Top Posts of 2013: Adventures

Rain squall over Yosemite Valley from near Old Inspiration Point, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Rain squall over Yosemite Valley from near Old Inspiration Point, Yosemite

Photography encourages us to go to new places, and to be out during the most beautiful times of day when others are asleep or eating dinner. And sometimes – for me anyway – getting to those places can turn into a bit of an adventure.

Last April, on Easter Sunday, Claudia and climbed over 2,000 feet in elevation through rain squalls toward Yosemite’s Old Inspiration Point. We never actually made it there, but we found another good spot nearby, and had a great adventure, as described in my post A Harebrained Idea.

In August, the Rim Fire broke out west of Yosemite. The fire spread rapidly, expanding into Yosemite, and eventually becoming the third-largest fire recorded in California.

I knew this was a big event in the history of Yosemite, so I turned my attention to photographing the fire. During my first attempts I stayed close to the road, as I described in this post. But later Claudia and I made an epic bushwhack to a dome near the Tioga Road, where I captured a panorama of the fire at dusk, shown below.

In my original post about this day I actually didn’t go into much detail about the bushwhack. I’d visited this dome once before, many years ago, to photograph a shapely Jeffrey Pine visible from the road. I remembered it as being a tough hike – only about three miles, roundtrip, but with lots of brush, and clambering over rocks. Yet this seemed like the best place to get a view of the Rim Fire. We decided to go for it, hoping the trip wasn’t as bad as I remembered.

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Top Posts of 2013: Testing the Nikon D800E

Milky Way reflected in an alpine lake, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Milky Way reflected in an alpine lake, Yosemite, captured with the Nikon D800E

I don’t often write about equipment, but in August I had a chance to test the Nikon D800E, and since it’s such a good camera for landscape photography I decided to share my thoughts about it. In terms of image quality, this camera is hard to beat unless you jump into the super-expensive realm of medium-format digital cameras.

There is, however, a new camera on the market that may prove to be a worthy competitor to the D800: the Sony A7r. This is a mirrorless camera with a 36-megapixel full-frame sensor. In fact it’s probably the exact same sensor that’s in the D800E, but in a smaller, lighter, and less-expensive package. DxO Mark rated the Sony sensor equal to the D800, and just a point below the D800E.

Unfortunately, hardly any lenses are available yet for this camera. As I write this I think only two lenses are shipping, a 35mm f/2.8, and a 55mm f/1.8, though more will be coming within the next six months or so. You can use Sony’s E-mount lenses for it’s NEX cameras with the A7r, but you’ll get serious vignetting. You can also buy adapters that will let you mount a variety of other lenses, including Zeiss, Nikon, Canon, and others. However, with most adapters you’ll lose the ability to autofocus (or if not, the performance will suffer), and possibly the automatic diaphragm as well. The D800 or D800E are still the best bets if you want a lot of megapixels with a great variety of fully-compatible lenses and accessories.

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Top Posts of 2013: The Adobe Creative Cloud

Sunbeams, Mariposa County, CA, USA

Sunbeams, Mariposa County, CA, USA

Throughout 2013, nothing generated more comments and passionate discussion than my posts about Adobe’s Creative Cloud. As most of you know, Adobe announced in May that it would no longer offer Photoshop and its other Creative Suite applications with a perpetual license. They became available by subscription only, and, at the time, with a rather steep monthly fee of $20 per month for an individual application.

In June I wrote My Thoughts on the Adobe Creative Cloud, which covered my initial reaction to this announcement. Since then some things have changed. Notably, Adobe lowered the monthly subscription rate to $9.99 per month for Photoshop and Lightroom together. At first they offered this rate only to people who already owned a license to Photoshop CS3 or later. Then they offered the package to everyone. I finally decided to subscribe, despite some misgivings; I wrote about my reasons here.

This Lightroom-and-Photoshop package is still available for $9.99 per month (with a one-year subscription) until December 31st. After that? Well who knows. I have a feeling Adobe could be offering similar deals in the future, but no guarantees!

2014 should be an interesting year. Will Adobe make Lightroom available by subscription only? Let’s hope not! Will other software companies move to a subscription-only model? Or will someone seize the opportunity created by all the ill-will toward Adobe and offer a true competitor to Photoshop – with a perpetual license? Stay tuned.

— Michael Frye

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Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author or principal photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to YosemiteYosemite Meditations, Yosemite Meditations for Women, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters. He has also written three eBooks: Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, Exposure for Outdoor Photography, and Landscapes in Lightroom 5: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide. Michael written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California.