Photography Tips « In the Moment: Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Photography Tips’

Photo Critique Series: Re-Processing a Misty Forest Scene

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

Photo Critique Series: “Mist” by David Eaton, Part 1 (direct link to YouTube)

Photo Critique Series: “Mist” by David Eaton, Part 2: Processing (direct link to YouTube)

Yes, the critiques are back—finally! This critique features a beautiful forest image called “Mist,” by David Eaton. The photograph was made in an area called The Chase near Birmingham, England.

This is my second video critique, and I’ve broken it into two parts. The first video discusses the processing (briefly), light, composition, exposure, and sharpness. In the second video I demonstrate how I re-processed the image in Lightroom.

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Tags: critique, Curves, digital darkroom, landscape photography, Lightroom, Michael Frye, Photography Tips
Posted in Critiques, Video Tutorials | 32 Comments »

Lunar Eclipse This Saturday

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Lunar Eclipse Sequence, 1:23 a.m. to 4:49 a.m., August 28, 2007

Before getting to the topic at hand, I want to let you know that eight people have signed up for the Eastern Sierra Fall Color Workshop since I announced it last Thursday. The limit is twelve students, and I’m sure it will fill up soon, so if you’re thinking about signing up don’t procrastinate!

Okay, on to the eclipse. Before dawn this Saturday, December 10th, viewers in the Western U.S. and Canada will be able to see a total lunar eclipse. If you live in the eastern half of the U.S. unfortunately you’ll only be able to see a partial eclipse. People in most of Europe, Asia, and Australia will also be able to see a total eclipse, though in Europe it will be visible at moonrise on Saturday evening. This NASA page shows where the eclipse will be visible throughout the world, and this page shows more detail for western North America.

Moon Position

If the weather cooperates, and you want to try make your own eclipse photographs, here are some tips. (I’ve copied some of this from my post a year ago, but the information about the moon position is all new.)

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Tags: landscape photography, lunar eclipse, Michael Frye, Night Photography, Photography Tips, Yosemite National Park
Posted in Advanced Techniques, Photography Tips | 33 Comments »

Does Cropping Have to Fit a Certain Aspect Ratio?

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

My preferred crop for this image of Bridalveil Fall doesn't fit any of the common aspect ratios.

My preferred crop for this image of Bridalveil Fall doesn't fit any of the common print sizes.

In the comments for my last critique, Michael Glover asked a question about cropping and aspect ratios. I get this question a lot, as many people feel that they must crop their images to a certain size—4×6, 8×10—for printing. So I thought I would expand on my answer to Michael and address this issue in more depth here.

The problem with cropping to fit a particular aspect ratio for printing is that you can compromise the photograph’s esthetics. The accompanying images of Bridalveil Fall show what I mean. Below you’ll find the uncropped version, with its original 2:3 (or 4×6 or 8×12) aspect ratio, and a version cropped to a 4:5 (or 8×10) ratio.

To me, the uncropped version leaves too much empty space on the right and left sides, while the 4:5 ratio is too square, and a bit static. I prefer the crop at the top of this post, which lies somewhere in between.

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Tags: aspect ratio, Bridalveil Fall, crop, cropping, landscape photography, Michael Frye, photography, Photography Tips, Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley
Posted in Digital Darkroom, Photography Tips | 15 Comments »

Photo Critique Series: An Intimate, Wide-Angle Composition from Scotland

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Photo Critique Series: “Finnich Gorge” by David Dalziel from Michael Frye on Vimeo.

I decided to try something new for this latest critique, and record my thoughts with video screen capture. I hope this will create a more interactive, immersive experience, as if you were watching me do a portfolio review in a workshop. Let me know how you like it!

To see the best detail, be sure to watch the video in HD and click the four arrows in the lower-right corner of the video to expand it. Once expanded, I prefer to turn scaling off (in the upper-right corner).

This week’s photo was made by David Dalziel in Finnich Gorge, just north of David’s home in Glasgow, Scotland. Recently I wrote about the third dimension in photography, and how lens choice can affect our perception of depth and space in a photograph. Then in my last critique I showed an example of how a telephoto lens can compress space, flatten perspective, and create patterns. This time we’ll look at the opposite: a wide-angle composition that creates a sense of depth, even though it’s not a grand, sweeping landscape.

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Tags: Adobe Camera Raw, critique, depth in photography, landscape photography, Lightroom, Michael Frye, photography, Photography Tips, Video
Posted in Critiques | 54 Comments »

Lightroom HDR

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

(Click here if you have trouble viewing this video)

Can you create HDR images in Lightroom? Yes! Well, sort of. Lightroom only works with one photograph at a time, so you can’t blend different exposures of a scene together. But you can handle some high-contrast scenes in Lightroom, without HDR software or Photoshop, by using Lightroom’s tools to exploit your camera’s full dynamic range. I explain how in this latest video.

Like many inventions, this technique was born out of laziness. I wanted to avoid the sometimes tedious process of blending exposures manually in Photoshop, with HDR software, or my favorite plugin, LR/Enfuse. I also try to keep my adjustments flexible by using Lightroom’s non-destructive workflow whenever possible.

This technique only works with Raw images, and scenes where the contrast isn’t extreme, but I keep finding more and more situations where it does work. If you try it, let me know how you make out!

As always, be sure to view this in high definition (720p) to see the tools and sliders clearly.

—Michael Frye

Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author and photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, plus the eBook Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom. He has 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.

Tags: Adobe Camera Raw, digital darkroom, HDR, landscape photography, Lightroom, Michael Frye, photography, Photography Tips, Sierra Nevada, tutorials, Video, Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley
Posted in Digital Darkroom, Photography Tips, Video Tutorials | 20 Comments »

Photo Critique Series: Patterns, Focal Points, and Telephoto Compression in a Palouse Country Landscape

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

"Steptoe Beauty" by Greg Speasl

This week’s photograph, titled “Steptoe Beauty,” was made by Greg Speasl in the Palouse country of eastern Washington. The image is an interesting study of how a telephoto lens can compress space and create patterns.

Light

Sidelight is usually a great way to bring out textures, and here the low-angle, late-afternoon sun raking across the fields from right to left brings out the beautiful textures and forms of the landscape. The alternating patterns of green and amber also create a nice color contrast.

Composition

Recently I wrote about depth in photography, and how wide-angle lenses can help create an illusion of depth, while longer focal lengths can flatten the perspective and emphasize patterns. This is a great example of the latter—Greg used a telephoto lens (210mm on a full-frame sensor) to zoom in, compress the space, and pick out an intriguing pattern in the sculptured hills. In fact we see two overall patterns here, one formed by the interplay between light and dark, the other created by the color contrast between regions of green and amber.

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Tags: composition, critique, depth, depth in photography, landscape photography, Michael Frye, Palouse Country, Photography Tips, telephoto lens
Posted in Critiques | 26 Comments »

The Third Dimension in Photography

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Redwoods and rhododendrons—telephoto view

A Tale of Two Photographs

Reading David duChemin’s eBook A Deeper Frame got me thinking about how we perceive depth and space in photographs, and how lens choice affects that perception.

David says that because photography turns “a world of three dimensions into two,” that “if we aim to create photographs that create within the reader a deeper, fuller, longer experience, it falls to us to recreate that depth.”

There’s no question that wide-angle lenses are better tools for creating a sense of depth in a photograph than telephoto lenses. Telephotos make objects appear closer together than they really are, compressing space and flattening the perspective. Wide-angle lenses make objects appear farther apart than they really are, expanding the sense of space, and, if used correctly, creating an illusion of depth.

These two photographs from my recent trip to the redwoods illustrate the difference. Both images include the same rhododendrons and redwoods.

In the top image I stepped back with a telephoto lens (130mm) and isolated part of the bush against two redwood trunks. It looks like the rhododendrons are only a few feet in front of the trees, but they’re not. They’re at least 20 feet away—illustrating the compression effect of the telephoto lens. The sense of depth is minimal.

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Tags: depth in photography, landscape photography, Michael Frye, Photography Tips, redwoods, saguaro cacti
Posted in New Images, Photography Tips, Vision and Creativity | 10 Comments »

Photo Critique Series: “Sunrise at Sunset Point” by Raymond

Friday, June 17th, 2011

"Sunrise From Sunset Point" by Raymond

The critiques are back! With my trip to Utah, and then having to restore the blog, it’s been awhile, but I’m happy to be able to present another photo critique this week, and I hope it won’t be so long until the next one. Thanks for your patience!

Light

This week’s photograph was made by Raymond in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Perhaps the most striking feature of this image is the colorful sky, with clouds appearing to radiate out from the sun just before it clears the horizon. The warm hues of the red-orange clouds, along with the rusty rocks, form a nice color contrast with the cool blues of the sky and distant mountains.

Composition

What I like most about this composition is how the foreground and background complement each other. Those radiating lines in the clouds are subtly echoed by the folds in the landscape below.

Raymond said, “I found the scene to have many things going on—the snow, the hoodoos, the colored bands across the canyon sides, the ridges running down the sides, etc. In circumstances like that I find it difficult to feel “sure” of how the elements are arranged. I basically placed the horizon at the one-third point and placed the sun at the left/right midpoint. With my fingers crossed, I was hoping the colored bands would help lead the eye into the distance and the canyon’s bowl-like shape to cradle the elements of the scene.”

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Tags: Bryce Canyon NP, critique, landscape photography, Michael Frye, Photography Tips
Posted in Critiques | 20 Comments »

The Art of Editing

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Sometimes it's easy to pick the winners—they just jump out at you, like this image did when I first looked saw it on my screen. But usually editing is a more difficult task.

Sometimes it's easy to pick the winners—they just jump out at you, like this image did when I first saw it on my screen. But usually editing is a more difficult task.

First of all, thanks to everyone who commented on my post from last Friday. Your participation is such a vital part of this blog, and makes it more fun for me, and everyone else.

Of the three dogwood images I posted, “C” was clearly the favorite. But there were some strong votes for A and B as well. Just another example of how subjective photography is!

It’s also an example of how difficult it can be to edit your work. When I ask students to bring a portfolio of ten images to a workshop, they often tell me how hard it was to narrow it down to such a small selection. Many have never had to do that before.

But editing—and I mean this in the traditional sense of selecting images, rather than processing or developing them—is one of the most important aspects of photography.

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Tags: landscape photography, Michael Frye, photo editing, photography, Photography Tips
Posted in Photography Tips | 19 Comments »