Travels and Stories
by Michael Frye | May 9, 2025 | Travels and Stories, Vision and Creativity
Dogwood and mist at sunset, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina. This isn’t a photograph I expected to make. I almost always keep the sky out of forest compositions, and if I see an interesting sunset developing I’ll usually look for a more expansive view. But here I thought the pastel colors in the sky might complement the softness of the dogwood blossoms and lingering mist, and decided to stick with what was in front of me and see what I could do. It turned out to be one of my favorite images from the trip.
Before visiting the Smokies I’d seen many wonderful photographs of the southern Appalachian Mountains by people like Charles Cramer, Christopher Burkett, William Neill, and Nye Simmons. Their images mostly focused on the forests in spring and fall – understandably, since those eastern hardwood forests are so beautiful in those seasons. So I had certain expectations about what I might see, and the kind of photographs I might make, based on seeing their work.
I certainly hoped and expected to photograph dogwoods blooming. But spring came early to the lower elevations, and the dogwoods were mostly done by the time Claudia and I arrived a week before the conference. We did find a few dogwoods still blooming at higher elevations, so I made it a point to photograph those before they faded. But I realized that I wouldn’t be doing much dogwood photography on this trip, so I had to let go of that expectation and focus on other things.
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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 | Mar 18, 2025 | Travels and Stories, Wildlife Photography
Mountains, glaciers, and chinstrap penguins, Antarctica
At the end of our trip to Antarctica for Visionary Wild, I told Claudia that the thing I was going to miss most was seeing penguins every day. It seemed strange to be heading back to a world without penguins, since they had been a daily part of our lives for two weeks.
And penguins are so much fun to watch. While supremely graceful in water, they’re awkward on land. Yet every day many penguins climb and descend from their nests on slopes so steep they would intimidate most humans. They fall all the time, but always seem to bounce back up and keep going. They’re determined and dedicated parents; they have to be to thrive and reproduce in this harsh environment. And they’re feisty. They won’t tolerate other penguins getting too close to their nest, or intruding on their space.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 26, 2025 | Travels and Stories
Sun, tree, snow, and cloud iridescence, Hokkaido, Japan. We were actually headed back to the hotel for breakfast when the sun broke through clouds, creating some beautiful light. My co-leader on this trip, Toshiki Nakanishi, knew just the spot to head for, with this lone tree on a snowy hillside. I bracketed five frames, two stops apart, to get detail in the bright clouds as well as the foreground shadows. The blue and gold colors near the sun are cloud iridescence in ice clouds.
After returning from Antarctica, Claudia and I spent a week at home, then flew across the Pacific to lead another trip for Visionary Wild on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island.
Hokkaido is known for its abundant snow in winter, and has become a popular destination for skiers and snowboarders. We saw many, many skis and snowboards on the luggage carousel at the Sapporo airport.
Hokkaido has also become known in the photography world for its minimalist winter landscapes, with trees, fences, and other objects isolated against the white, snowy backdrop. Shinzo Maeda produced some beautifully-simple color work in Hokkaido in the 80s and 90s, and then Michael Kenna brought his singular style of black-and-white photography to the island in the early 2000s (and continues to photograph Hokkaido today).
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by Michael Frye | Feb 6, 2025 | Travels and Stories
Iceberg at sunset, Antarctica. As if putting on a grand finale, we passed a large, beautifully-shaped iceberg just after sunset, with colorful clouds lingering in the sky to the south.
As I said in my last post, I had a wonderful and eye-opening introduction to Antarctica. But the next day, January 18th, would be even better.
By this second morning we were all starting to get used to the rhythms of life on board the ship, and our group had quickly gelled. We had a really great group, and had lots of fun together. And the crew members of the Hans Hansson were all super nice, going out of their way to make us all feel comfortable and give us the best experience possible.
The day began with overcast skies – which gave us a little extra sleep, since there wasn’t a compelling reason to get up for sunrise at 3:00 a.m.! But later in the morning skies started to clear.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 2, 2025 | Travels and Stories
Chinstrap penguin calling, Antarctica. On our first zodiac excursion we encountered these two chinstraps posing for us on an iceberg in a snowstorm.
Claudia and I just returned home from Antarctica. What a wonderful trip! It’s hard to believe that this place actually exists here on earth, because it seems so different than everywhere else on the planet. It’s other-worldly, yet strikingly beautiful.
I made a lot of photos on this trip – over 35,000! Some of that was wildlife photography, which demands capturing many frames to catch the right pose or moment of action. And most of the landscape photos were also hand-held from a moving ship or zodiac, where I had to capture a series of frames to ensure catching the right angle as we passed one compelling scene after another. But the biggest problem was that the place is just so damned beautiful that there were photos everywhere I looked!
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