Yellow and green aspens in Lee Vining Canyon (from a few years ago)
Last weekend Claudia and I made our annual pilgrimage to Bishop, on the eastern side of the Sierra, for the Millpond Music Festival—or, as Joe Craven likes to say, “Music festival and consciousness-raising event.”
We’ve actually lost track of how many years in a row we’ve gone to Millpond; it’s either twelve or thirteen. But we look forward to it every year—it’s relaxing and fun, and a great way to refresh and renew our spirits. I think I see more smiling faces per hour at Millpond than anywhere else. In fact this past Sunday evening, dancing in front of the stage to Masanga Marimba and Los Lobos (an interesting mix!), I think I saw more big, wide, joyous smiles than I’ve seen all year.
By now you’re probably wondering, “What’s this got to do with photography?” Well first of all, I think we all need to recharge ourselves once in awhile. For me, since I tend to eat, sleep, and breathe photography on most days, it’s good to do something completely different. And Millpond is not only different, but I get to be outside and enjoy something creative and life-affirming like music.
It’s here! The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite iPhone app is on sale now in the app store. Watch the video to see a demonstration of its features, including:
• In-depth descriptions of 40 outstanding locations including the classic Yosemite Valley views, high country, and surrounding areas.
• Locations Filter—a unique feature that allows you to quickly find the best photo spots for any month and time of day.
• Over 100 stunning photographs show you what you can see at each location.
• Detailed maps and directions.
• Clear, logical layout makes it easy to find the information you need.
• Lots of photography tips to help you capture better images of the park, including Exposure for Digital Cameras, Composition, Depth of Field, HDR and Exposure Blending, Photographing Waterfalls and Cascades, Clearing Storms, and more.
• Sunrise and sunset times, full moon dates, and depth-of-field calculator
• Seasonal Planning Guide helps you find unique photo opportunities for each month.
Since it was first published in 2000, my book The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite has been very popular. Over the years, I’ve heard from so many photographers who love the book and have found it helpful when trying to capture images of Yosemite. Thank you all so much!
On Thursday, The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite will become available as an iPhone app! This app contains all the information in the original book, and much more: three new locations, completely revised and updated information for the entire park, and new tips specifically designed for digital photography. Plus many great features that could only work in an app—like the ability to filter the locations and find only the best ones for a particular month and time.
I’ll give you all the details on Thursday—stay tuned!
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.
The Ansel Adams Gallery has released their (nearly) complete workshop schedule for 2012. I’ll be teaching four workshops for them, including Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom: Mastering Lightroom (January); Spring Yosemite Digital Camera Workshop (April); Full Moon Night Photography (July); and The Digital Landscape: Autumn in Yosemite (October).
Lightroom has rapidly become the software tool of choice for many photographers because it’s simple, yet powerful—easy to use, but sophisticated enough to get great results with almost any image. For the first time I’ll be teaching a workshop specifically focused on this tool—Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom: Mastering Lightroom.
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.
(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 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.
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.
It’s wildflower season in the Yosemite high country, which made me think about this image that I made 25 years ago, in August of 1986, in Tuolumne Meadows.
In the 1980s large swaths of Lemmon’s paintbrush and shooting stars were common in Tuolumne Meadows in the summer. But 1986 brought the best bloom I’ve ever seen there, with this great mix of paintbrush, little elephant’s heads, lupine, shooting stars, penstemons, and… that yellow flower (arrowhead butterweed?). For some reason though wildflowers have diminished in Tuolumne Meadows in recent years, and those great blooms seem to be a thing of the past.
In the summer of 1986 I was working at The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Valley. On the day I made this photograph I drove up to the high country after work. A thunderstorm had rolled through, leaving the meadows wet and the skies overcast. But just before sunset the sun crawled underneath the clouds and lit up the peaks in the distance.
I actually think I did a pretty good job with the composition here. I needed to find some kind of structure or design to hold the foreground together and lead the viewer’s eyes into the distance. The little V- shaped group of flowers at the bottom of the frame accomplished both those things, giving the foreground some structure and leading viewer’s eyes toward the background. As a bonus, that V-shape mirrors the upside down Vs of the peaks.
The horizon line is high, but I think that’s appropriate here: the foreground is much more interesting than the sky. I’m glad I wasn’t overly concerned about putting the horizon a third of the way from the top.
My Full Moon Night Photography workshop ended just after midnight last night. We had a lot of fun. Once people learned the basics I think they realized that photographing after dark isn’t that difficult. Then their creative juices started flowing and they started light-painting tufa towers and juniper trees with abandon!
As a bonus, we saw a spectacular sunset at Mono Lake Friday evening. Here’s one of my photographs of that sunset, and a couple of images from South Tufa I made while working with students on light-painting techniques. I hope to post some of the participant’s images here also as soon as they’ve processed them.
I’ve been using Lightroom since Adobe released the beta version in 2006. Over the years I’ve learned many shortcuts, and in this video I share some of my favorite tips – things I use all the time to streamline my workflow:
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