Composition
by Michael Frye | May 4, 2025 | Composition, Light and Weather, Travels and Stories
Sunbeams and ridges, Great Smoky Mountains NP, North Carolina
Claudia and I just returned from Tennessee and the Out of the Great Smoky Mountains photo conference. Technically this wasn’t our first visit to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, since eleven years ago we landed briefly in Cherokee, on the North Carolina side of the park, after driving to the southwest terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway. But for all practical purposes this was our first time exploring the park, and definitely the first time visiting the Tennessee side.
And we loved it. Well, most of it. Gatlinburg is… something. And the traffic in Cades Cove can be crazy. But the park itself is beautiful. I love the hardwood forests of the Smokies, which are so similar to the woods I played in as a child growing up in the Northeast. These forests were especially pretty decked out in their bright spring greens, with rushing creeks and rivers cascading under the arcing branches of the trees.
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by Michael Frye | Apr 10, 2025 | Composition, Light and Weather
Twisting wash, badlands, Southern California. The curvy lines of the wash and surrounding ridges created a design I could build a composition around. Soft sidelight from the post-sunset glow brought out the forms and textures of the land, without the harshness of direct sunlight.
In late March Claudia and I joined photographer friends in the deserts of Southern California. We enjoyed just hanging out together, but I also got to visit some badlands areas I’d never photographed before, which was lots of fun.
To me, photographing badlands is similar to photographing sand dunes. Both have acres of naked earth, sculpted into interesting shapes and forms by either wind or water. With badlands the shapes are more angular than in dunes, but you can find great designs in both environments.
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by Michael Frye | Mar 2, 2025 | Composition
Japanese rowan tree in a thermal area, Hokkaido, Japan. A complex photograph that I discuss in depth below.
Hokkaido has become known for its minimalist landscapes, with trees, fences, or other objects isolated against the snowy winter backdrop. These zen-like compositions can be striking and beautiful, and I made my share of sparing, super-simple photographs there, following in the footsteps of Shinzo Maeda and Michael Kenna.
But there are many ways to photograph any location. My co-instructor on our Hokkaido trip for Visionary Wild, Toshiki Nakanishi, has lived in central Hokkaido for 20 years, and his images tend to be more complex and dramatic. Check out this image, for example – taken from his house! (With a telephoto lens.) Or this amazing photo.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 15, 2024 | Advanced Techniques, Composition
Ice fingers, Yosemite NP, California. 400mm, 1 second at f/16, ISO 100; 18 focus-stacked frames blended with Helicon Focus Pro. I needed to photograph this detail at an angle to get the orange reflections, requiring focus-stacking to get everything sharp. (It’s a reflection of a cliff lit by the setting sun.)
Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday two smaller storms moved through the Sierra, bringing rain and higher-elevation snow. But for a couple of weeks before that it had been dry and warm – reaching the upper 60s at our house in Mariposa.
Early last week, as we were starting our workshop in Yosemite Valley, temperatures cooled off a bit, allowing ice to form along the banks of the Merced River. It’s always fun to photograph ice like this, with its beautiful patterns, designs, and colors. But it can be challenging, both technically and creatively.
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by Michael Frye | Oct 13, 2024 | Composition, Light and Weather
Misty sunrise from Tunnel View, Yosemite NP, California. Where does your eye go in this photograph? Here the brightest areas are in the middle of the image, while the edges are darker, helping to draw the eye into the picture, rather than out of the frame.
We launched our first online workshop about composition about 18 months ago, and then more recently added additional online workshops focused on light. I picked these topics because I think they are, hands down, the two most important aspects of photography.
In photography, nothing is more fundamental than light. When we press the shutter, we record the light falling on the film or sensor at that moment. Light is literally the medium we’re working with, and the quality of the light has everything to do with the mood and message of the photograph.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 20, 2023 | Composition, Light and Weather
Redwood, maple, firs, and sunbeams, northern California
We had a long, lingering autumn here on the west coast – especially in the Pacific Northwest. On our way up to Oregon in early November, Claudia and I stopped in some redwood groves to check on the fall color. And we found lots of it. It seemed like a good year for color throughout the Northwest, including the far northern corner of California where the biggest redwoods grow. Underneath the redwood canopy, vine maples and big-leaf maples – the same species found on the Olympic Peninsula, and throughout much of Oregon and Washington – can add splashes of color to the forest.
I had long wanted to photograph fall color in the redwoods, but it’s difficult to find the right conditions, especially since the best groves are a nine-hour drive from home. Some years the big-leaf maples just turn brown. And even if they do turn yellow the timing is highly variable. So we felt very lucky to find some good color this year.
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