In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Aug 19, 2011 | Reviews
Light is a vital aspect of photography—maybe the single most important element. We often assume that we have to adapt our photography to whatever light is available, but that’s not always true. We can create our own light.
Flash is one of the most effective ways of doing that, but flash technique and equipment can be complicated and intimidating. I’d been a serious photographer for a long time before I ever used flash. In fact I was assisting Moose Peterson with a workshop in Montana in the early ’90s, and as he tried to attach a flash to my camera he said, “This is a virgin hotshoe!” It was true: no flash had ever been mounted on that camera. Moose shook his head in amazement, and then loaned me an old flash of his that he didn’t use any more, encouraging me to experiment with it.
I guess I took that advice and ran with it, eventually using flash in highly complex ways to make some of my best-known nighttime images. But even if you have no desire to take things this far, learning to use flash can add an extra dimension to your photography. It’s especially effective with people, but can also be used in many interesting ways for landscapes.
Maybe I’ll write a post about using flash for landscapes sometime, but in the mean time Craft & Vision has just released a new eBook called Making Light, by Piet Van Den Eynde, and I think it’s a great introduction to general flash technique, and especially for using flash with people. Piet (pronounced Pete) does an excellent job of making the sometimes complex world of flash photography easy to understand. He encourages you to take the flash off the camera (absolutely essential in my opinion), and shows you exactly how to do that. I especially liked his examples—nine in all—showing how he used minimal equipment to add light to his photographs of people. Piet likes to travel by bicycle, so that forces him to keep his equipment simple!
As always, this Craft & Vision eBook is only five dollars. What’s more, until midnight, August 21st, you can get Making Light for $4 (discount code LIGHT4). Or you can buy five eBooks for the price of four (discount code LIGHT20). That includes my eBook Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, so if you don’t already own a copy this is a great opportunity to get both Light & Land, Making Light, and three other Craft & Vision eBooks for only $20. (I’ve reviewed two more of these eBooks in the past: A Deeper Frame by David duChemin, and The Evocative Image by Andrew S. Gibson.)
—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.
by Michael Frye | Aug 10, 2011 | Travels and Stories
Rising Moon, Gates of the Valley
Not every photo has an interesting story behind it, but the approaching full moon reminded me of the eventful day I had before making this image from Gates of the Valley in Yosemite.
I had been skiing at Badger Pass, and while gliding to the top of the Red Fox run I saw a snowboarder out of the corner of my eye. He was facing left, making a right turn into my path, and moving fast. He clearly didn’t see me and I didn’t have time to turn, so I yelled, “Look out!” and braced for impact.
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by Michael Frye | Jun 29, 2011 | Reviews
A Deeper Frame
I think David duChemin is one of the most refreshing voices in the world of photography today. While most of the photographic world seems to talk about equipment, or the latest way to make your photographs “pop” in Photoshop, David prefers to talk about vision, and emotion, and the art of photography. Radical stuff.
David, as some of you may know, is the founder of Craft & Vision, the publisher of my eBook Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom—as well as over twenty other eBooks. It’s been awhile since David wrote his own eBook, so I was excited to hear that he was working on a new one.
This book—A Deeper Frame—is now available, and it lives up to my high expectations for David’s writing. In this volume David examines an aspect of photography that most of us have probably thought about at one time or another: depth. But in typical fashion, David offers fresh perspectives, and (pardon the pun), a deeper look at this vital subject. He certainly got me thinking with passages like this:
The more a photograph recreates the illusion of reality as we experience it, the deeper the potential experience, the longer the memory of the image, the greater the possible impact on their hearts and minds. Deeper photographs give us a means to create more engaging one-frame visual stories.
Of course there’s also plenty of more practical advice about how to create depth in your photographs, including an interesting discussion of perspective, placement of elements within the frame, optics, and focus. Then he moves on to some less-obvious ways to create depth through color and light.
If there’s one thing missing from this volume, it’s how to flip this concept around: to deliberately flatten the perspective in a photograph—something I do frequently. Maybe I’ll post something about that here in the future. But in the meantime, I highly recommend you read this eBook. If nothing else it will get you thinking about the whole concept of depth in photographs, something that most of us—myself included—pay too little attention to.
As always, this Craft & Vision eBook is only five dollars. What’s more, until midnight, July 2nd, you can get A Deeper Frame for $4 (discount code DEEP4). Or you can buy 5 eBooks (including Light & Land, if you don’t already own a copy!) for the price of 4 (discount code DEEP20). And, for the first time, an even bigger volume discount: 12 eBooks for $40. Use discount code DEEPER12.
by Michael Frye | Jun 22, 2011 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Half Dome and oaks in flooded Leidig Meadow, June 16th
Last Thursday Claudia and I rose early and drove up to Yosemite Valley to see the high water. When we arrived, we found Swinging Bridge almost completely submerged, and large portions of Leidig and Chapel meadows resembled lakes.
I wanted to make a photograph that “said” high water—that really showed the flood. But when the water is this high, many of the best viewpoints are under water! I found a spot in Leidig Meadow that looked great, with two of my favorite Yosemite Valley oaks rising out of the pond. But there was no way to photograph these trees from dry ground without contending with intervening branches and trunks. If I wanted this photograph, I’d have to wade in.
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by Michael Frye | Jun 20, 2011 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Sunset at Tenaya Lake, Saturday evening
Tioga Pass opened Saturday, making the Yosemite high country accessible again. We always like to see this terrain when it’s still covered in snow—a taste of winter in May or even June—so Claudia and I drove up on Saturday afternoon. There was a lot of snow, but based on reports we heard during the last two weeks we actually expected more. The recent warm weather has melted the snowpack quickly. But, as you can see from the short video below, we found some large snow banks, and Tenaya and Tioga Lakes were still mostly frozen.
Skies became increasingly overcast Saturday afternoon, so I photographed abstract patterns and subtle colors in the ice at Tenaya Lake, not expecting much of a sunset. But late in the day I noticed a hint of purple in the clouds, and soon the sky exploded into shades of red, allowing me to capture the image at the top of this post.
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