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The response to my new online store has been gratifying—thanks everyone! We’ll be adding more products, services, and special offers in the weeks and months to come, so stay tuned.
In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
Only Two Days Left!
Redbud Reflection — get 20% off this print until midnight Sunday
A reminder that there are only two days left in the opening sale for my online store! Get 20 percent off everything until midnight Sunday. Just type “photojunkie” into the Discount Code box in the shopping cart.
Visit the Books & Posters section purchase a signed copy The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite or my latest book, Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters.
Or browse through the Portfolios to find just the right print to put on your wall or give as a gift. All the images in the Yosemite and Eastern Sierra portfolios are available as “Mini-Mikes.” These are approximately 7×9 inch prints, initialed only, on 11×14 mats. At only 35 dollars, they’re a bargain compared to my larger, limited edition prints that start at $325. Click on the image thumbnails to see more information about each print and find the “Add to Cart” buttons.
Photo Critique Series: “McGee Creek” by Joe Lemm
This week’s photograph was made by Joe Lemm near McGee Creek, on the eastern side of my home mountain range, the Sierra Nevada. By having his image chosen for this critique Joe will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to theFlickr group I created for this purpose.
This is a beautiful mountain scene, with a nice juxtaposition between flowers and distant peaks. The colors are harmonious and pleasing; the yellow mule’s ears in the foreground brighten the mood and give this scene an idyllic feeling. Joe was lucky to find clouds in the sky at sunrise—uncommon in the Sierra in summer. But everyone needs a little luck now and then. Technique and vision are important, but there’s no substitute for being in the right place at the right time!
When you find yourself facing a beautiful scene, you have to make the most of the opportunity. The most important consideration is the composition: what, exactly, do you frame?
In the past two critiques (“Red Sky at Night” and “Glen Coe“) I’ve discussed photographs with prominent foregrounds. In both cases I thought the images might have been stronger without them; I felt the backgrounds were more interesting, and the foregrounds distracting.
Here, though, I think the foreground clearly adds to the image; in fact I think the flowers are the most eye-catching thing in the frame. There’s a good visual connection between the bottom and top of the image: the yellows, purples, and greens in the foreground complement the golds, blues, and greens in the background. The arrangement of those flowers also meshes nicely with the peaks: there’s a subtle V shape to the yellow mule’s ears that echoes the broad V of the ridgeline and smaller Vs in the notches between the peaks.
The only minor complaint I have about the composition is that I’d like to see a little more breathing room around the prominent yellow blossoms along the bottom and left edges, and would prefer that the large flower along the left edge wasn’t missing the tips of its petals. Of course zooming out and including more space at the bottom and sides might have introduced other distractions. In a situation like this it’s virtually impossible to avoid cutting some flowers in half, and there could have been patches of dirt or rocks or other unwanted elements that needed to be cropped out of the frame.
So I’m going to give Joe the benefit of the doubt here and assume that there were good reasons for not including more space around the bottom edges. Overall I think he did a good job of finding a foreground that adds something to the photograph, and positioning the camera to emphasize that V shape of the flowers.
But as always, I’d like to hear what you think. Does this foreground work? What do you think of the composition overall?
Technically this is well executed. Joe used a small aperture, f/18, to get sufficient depth of field, and everything looks sharp, even at a larger size. Wind can often be a problem when capturing images like this—you need a small aperture to get depth of field, but that forces you to use a slower shutter speed. Perhaps Joe got lucky (again!) and found a calm morning.
Joe said he used a three-stop graduated neutral-density filter to balance the bright sky with the darker foreground. Mountain scenes like this often require a graduated filter or exposure blending to balance sunlit peaks or sky with shaded areas below. Here the transition looks pretty natural; I don’t see any obvious line that would make the filter’s presence obvious.
Joe told me that he processed the Raw file three ways—normal, one stop under, and one stop over—then merged those three images with Photomatix HDR software. The result appears natural, again, with none of that HDR grunge look. The only hint that this might be HDR is that some of the colors, particularly the yellow-orange flowers, might be slightly over-saturated, and when viewed larger you can see a thin blue halo along the tops of the peaks—although that might be chromatic aberration in the lens (which could be fixed in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw), or oversharpening, or both.
Joe said that he also processed the image without HDR, and actually liked that version better, so I asked him to send it to me, and here it is (left). Personally I prefer the HDR version; the shadows are more open, and it feels more luminous. Just for fun I tried to adjust this non-HDR version to look more like the HDR version. I used a little Fill Light in Lightroom to open up the shadows, added Clarity to boost midtone contrast, then increased Vibrance to approximate the saturation in the HDR version.
The result, shown below, is actually pretty close to the HDR photograph, and in some ways I like it better. But it shows that there are many ways to process an image. There are no right or wrong answers—just different interpretations.
Non-HDR version with added Fill Light, Clarity, and Vibrance
Overall this a well-seen, well-executed photograph in which the foreground and background complement each other nicely.
Thanks Joe for sharing your image! You can see more his work on Flickr.
If you like these critiques, share them with a friend! Email this article, or click on one of the buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
As part of being chosen for this week’s critique Joe will receive a free 16×20 matted print courtesy of the folks at Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques, just upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose. If you’re not a Flickr member yet, joining is free and easy. You’ll have to read and accept the rules for the group before adding images, and please, no more than five photos per person per week. I’ll be posting the next critique in two weeks. Thanks for participating!
August Flowers
Lupine and cow parsnip near the Glacier Point Road last Sunday
As expected, the wildflowers are nearing their peak in the higher elevations of Yosemite. They’re not really late; this is typical timing after a heavy winter. A fleeting, beautiful period of time has begun.
Summit Meadow, right along the Glacier Point Road, is a damp, boggy place. As the meadow slowly dries out over the summer, the shooting stars that dominated the early-season landscape give way to corn lilies, sneezeweed and lupine. There should be a nice mix of flowers there by this weekend. There are also many other small meadows and clearings near this road with flowers—you just have to look. It might also be worth a short hike to McGurk or Westfall meadows. A couple of years ago Claudia and I arranged a car shuttle and hiked from Taft Point to the McGurk Meadow trailhead, and found lots of great flowers along the way.
Speaking of Claudia, there’s a photo of her below near Crane Flat, standing next to the tallest corn lily I’ve ever seen. Ten feet tall? It’s a good year for corn lilies. In some summers a cold snap kills them before they bloom, but while we had a late spring, the temperatures have been moderate since early June, and corn lily blossoms are abundant right now. Some are already spent at Crane Flat, at only 6000 feet in elevation, but at 7000 feet and higher they should still be going strong for another week or so.
Other flowers, however, are still blooming at Crane Flat. Last Thursday the sneezeweed, coneflowers, and lupine were abundant, and other blossoms like yampah and goldenrod were about to bloom in big numbers.
I haven’t been to Tuolumne Meadows recently, but Claudia has, and says the wildflower display is typical of recent years—scattered blooms, but no thick carpets of flowers. However she found more color in other places, like along the trail to Mono Pass. It’s likely that other spots near Tioga Pass have good displays as well.
Please be careful when photographing wildflowers, and try not to trample them in your efforts to find the perfect composition. We want them to bloom next year too!
New Online Store
Autumn Sunrise, Half Dome and the Merced River; available as a poster or matted print
I’m very excited to announce my new online store! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time—to allow you, my faithful blog readers, Facebook fans, and Twitter followers to buy books, posters, and prints directly from me, and get those books and posters individually signed.
Visit the Books & Posters section of my web site to purchase a signed copy of my latest book, Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, or get my classicBand of Light, El Capitan poster.
Or browse through the Portfolios section to find just the right print to put on your wall or give as a gift. All the images in the Yosemite and Eastern Sierra portfolios are available as “Mini-Mikes.” These are approximately 7×9 inch prints, initialed only, on 11×14 mats. At only 35 dollars, they’re a bargain compared to my larger, limited edition prints that start at $325. Click on the image thumbnails to see more information about each print and find the “Add to Cart” buttons.
Transactions are handled securely with PayPal or Google Checkout. To start things rolling, and to show my appreciation to for all your support, comments, and participation in this blog, I’m offering 20% off every purchase through August 15th. That’s coming up soon, so don’t miss out! Just type “photojunkie” into the Discount Code box in the shopping cart.
Photo Critique Series: “Glen Coe” by Tim Smalley
This week’s photograph was made by Tim Smalley near Kinlochleven, Scotland. By having his image chosen for this critique Tim will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose.
The first thing that grabbed me about this photograph is the wonderful light. The dappled sunshine, rich colors, and strong contrast create a powerful mood. It looks like a scene from Lord of the Rings; I could imagine winged Nazgûl swooping down over the valley.
Tim said that “There was a certain emotion that I wanted to express” about Glen Coe. “The weather is often quite mixed . . . and there can be some phenomenal light, even during the day as the sun breaks through parting clouds.” (more…)
Camera Calibration for Raw Files
Vision is the most important part of photography. Your eye is what makes the difference between a great photograph and a mediocre one.
But when realizing your vision and making it come to life in the final image, getting the right color is vital.
Recently I posted two videos about using curves in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Camera Raw. But there’s a more fundamental step that I haven’t talked about, something you might want to do with Raw files before adding curves, correcting white balance, or doing anything else: choosing a profile.
What is a Camera Profile?
A camera profile is a translator: it’s translates the colors that a camera captures into the colors they should be. In other words, if a certain camera tends to turn reds into orange, the profile will correct for that and convert those reds back to their proper hue. Of course there’s no such thing as “correct” color—it’s all subjective. So profiles can come in different flavors: more saturated, less saturated, more contrasty, etc. Choosing the right flavor for your image is the first step toward making your visualization come to life.
I’ve posted a new video on YouTube that delves into this seemingly esoteric yet actually quite simple subject. In it I show you how to choose different profiles in Lightroom, and explore whether creating a custom profile might be worthwhile. I evaluate some profiles I made with the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport, a $99 package for making custom camera profiles in any lighting situation. Yes, full disclosure, they actually gave this to me for free—I must be hitting the big time!
Also, there’s one more reason for exploring different profile options: reducing noise, banding, and posterization. I show an example where the profile choice made a dramatic difference in noise and banding.
I didn’t have time to demonstrate it in the video, but the same profile choices are also available in Adobe Camera Raw—just look under the Camera Calibration tab, third from the right, as shown here.
So here’s a link to the video:
Camera Calibration and Profiles
As always, it helps to view this at the highest resolution, 480p, and click on the double-sided arrow to make the video larger.
I hope you enjoy it! Comments are always appreciated, and if you like video, please share it with a friend: Email this article, or click on one of the buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
High Country Wildflowers in Yosemite
Pond and shooting stars along the Glacier Point Road
It’s late July, and spring is long gone from the Sierra foothills, where I live, and in most of California—indeed, most of the United States. But in the high elevations of the Sierra Nevada the wildflowers are just getting started. Shooting stars are abundant right now between 7000 and 9000 feet in Yosemite. I made the photograph above near the Glacier Point Road last Sunday. But shooting stars are early bloomers, and the rest of the high-country flowers are only beginning to emerge. The peak bloom at these elevations will probably arrive in early August.
Wildlfowers in August? Absolutely. Flowers bloom late in the mountains—in fact one of the best wildflower displays I’ve seen in Yosemite occurred in September after an exceptionally heavy winter.
The best places to look for flowers are often small meadows at around 7000 to 8000 feet. Many areas along the Glacier Point Road fit this description, including Summit Meadow, right next to the road, and McGurk Meadow, which requires a short hike. Naturally these areas are described in my book, the Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite—Location 21 (click here to purchase a signed copy directly from me). (more…)
Photo Critique Series: “Red Sky at Night” by Ellie Stone
“Red Sky at Night” by Ellie Stone
This week’s photograph was made by Ellie Stone at Lake New Hogan in Calaveras County, California. By having her image chosen for this critique Ellie will receive a free 16×20 matted print from Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques you can upload them to theFlickr group I created for this purpose.
We’ve all seen many sunset photos. For an image like this to grab out attention it either has to portray an exceptional sunset, or somehow integrate a less-than-exceptional sunset into an unusual and striking composition.
This image certainly captured a great sunset—the color is amazing, and the wavy, zig-zagging lines of the clouds create wonderful patterns. The scene has a powerful, end-of-the-day mood. Ellie used a 15-second shutter speed to blur the choppy water—a good decision, I think, as that smoothed out the waves and added an interesting, soft texture that contrasts with the hard-edged foreground rocks.
I’m not sure, however, about the decision to include those rocks in the first place. It’s often difficult to decide whether to include a foreground or not: Does the foreground add interest to the scene, or is it an unnecessary distraction? In this case I think the sunset sky and water are enough to hold our attention. The sky, especially, is exceptional, and to me should be the focus of the composition. The rocks don’t seem as interesting.
There’s another question to ask yourself before including a foreground: Do the lines and shapes of that foreground complement the background, or clash with it? To me the lines and shapes of these foreground rocks don’t integrate particularly well with the background.
I know some books say that you should always include a foreground, middle ground, and background in landscape photographs, but I think that’s one of those arbitrary rules that should be ignored. It’s great to include all three, but only if each is adding something to the photograph. The world is infinitely varied, and no rule can encompass every situation. As Edward Weston said, “Pictures came first. Rules followed. No one ever became an artist by learning rules or keeping them.”
With that in mind, here’s a version where I’ve cropped out the foreground. The camera position forced me to eliminate most of the water along with the rocks, but since the sky is the most interesting thing in the scene, and should fill most of the frame anyway, I think the cropped version works pretty well.
Of course if you can find a foreground that adds interest, and meshes with the background, by all means include it. While I don’t think the somewhat jumbled arrangement of rocks in the original version is appealing, there’s one, isolated rock on the left has a great shape, so I tried another crop which includes just that rock and a piece of sky. That works too: it’s simple, and the diamond shape of the rock echoes some of the diagonal lines of the clouds. But this composition emphasizes the foreground more than the sky, and with such a spectacular sunset I’m not sure that’s the right idea.
As always, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the foreground and the various crops presented here. Which version do you like best? Or is there some other framing that you think might be even better?
Technically this is well executed. If you’re going to include a foreground, then both foreground and background should be in focus! And they are here. The overall exposure looks right. Ellie said that she used a neutral-density filter to slow the shutter speed and blur the water’s motion, but wishes she had used a graduated filter to lighten the rocks relative to the foreground. Perhaps that might have helped, but with reflections you have to be careful not to lighten the foreground too much, as it looks unnatural when the water becomes lighter than the sky.
Despite my nitpicks about the foreground this is a very nice photograph, with great light, color, and mood, and with an effective use of a slow shutter speed to smooth the texture of the water.
Thanks Ellie for sharing your image! You can see more her work on Flickr (be sure to check out her amazing “Misty Bay Bridge” photo).
If you like these critiques, share them with a friend! Email this article, or click on one of the buttons below to post it on Facebook or Twitter.
As part of being chosen for this week’s critique Ellie will receive a free 16×20 matted print courtesy of the folks at Aspen Creek Photo. If you’d like your images considered for future critiques, just upload them to the Flickr group I created for this purpose. If you’re not a Flickr member yet, joining is free and easy. You’ll have to read and accept the rules for the group before adding images, and please, no more than five photos per person per week. I’ll be posting the next critique in two weeks. Thanks for participating!
Hidden Yosemite Workshop
North Peak and Greenstone Lake, sunrise
I just finished teaching the Hidden Yosemite workshop for The Ansel Adams Gallery. Every year this is a really fun class, and this time was no exception. There’s something about being away from the roads that adds an extra dimension to the workshop. We had a great group, and the weather was excellent. Saturday morning at Greenstone Lake was probably the photographic highlight, with glassy water and a great mix of sun and clouds—the first time I’ve seen clouds at sunrise from this spot. The photograph above shows the first blush of light on North Peak; later, in the image below, I used a four-stop neutral-density filter, plus a polarizer, to slow the shutter speed and blur the fast-moving clouds.
We had a slide show on the last day of the workshop, and everyone in the class showed great images from Saturday morning—how could you miss with light like that? But we also saw many interesting, imaginative photographs from all the other locations we visited. It was great to see everyone’s growth over the five days of the workshop. I’ll post a link to some of the student’s photos at some point.
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:
Stay Connected
Landscapes in Lightroom Course
Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite App
