Wildlife Photography
by Michael Frye | Jul 7, 2024 | Travels and Stories, Wildlife Photography
Grizzly 399 and her 18-month-old cub, Grand Teton NP, Wyoming
As I mentioned in my last post, Claudia and I had a great time watching and photographing the wildlife in the Tetons, and during a brief visit to Yellowstone. There’s so much wildlife in these parks, and the animals are relatively easy to see.
For us, the highlight was seeing the famous Grizzly 399 with her yearling cub, and Grizzly 1063 with her triplet cubs of the year – experiences we shared with our friends Charlotte Gibb and Chrissy Donadi, which made it even more fun.
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by Michael Frye | Oct 31, 2021 | Travels and Stories, Wildlife Photography
Misty sunrise, Yellowstone
I usually talk about photography as an art form – a way to express yourself and your vision, and to communicate with others through this wonderful medium.
But photographs also have an amazing ability to evoke memories. Sometimes a well-executed image made by someone else will resonate with us because it stirs a memory of a past event in our lives.
Naturally though, photographs from our own lives can be even more powerful in evoking memories from our past. Most of us have had the experience of looking through old family photos, and suddenly having a vivid recollection of an event we hadn’t thought about in years. It doesn’t matter if the images themselves are mediocre; they still have tremendous power to stir recollections.
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by Michael Frye | Mar 9, 2021 | Wildlife Photography
Sandhill cranes at sunrise, San Joaquin Valley, California
During this past winter Claudia and I spent a lot of time in California’s Central Valley. This area isn’t known for its scenic beauty, but we found a lot of beauty there.
This was once a vast region of seasonal wetlands and flower-filled prairies, teeming with waterfowl, elk, pronghorn antelope, wolves, grizzly bears, and endless acres of springtime flowers. It’s estimated that 500,000 tule elk once roamed this region, and early visitors described flocks of wintering geese so large and dense they darkened the midday sky. This “American Serengeti” existed less than 200 years ago, in an area now occupied by farmlands, towns, and cities.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 27, 2020 | Wildlife Photography
Sandhill crane takeoff, San Joaquin Valley, California. 327mm, 1/500 sec. at f/5.6, ISO 2000.
Every year Claudia and I photograph migratory birds wintering in California’s Central Valley. It’s a world of constant motion, with groups of birds taking off, landing, moving from fields to ponds (and back), skimming over marshes, or probing the water for food.
It’s that motion that we find so captivating, and it’s that motion that’s so challenging to photograph. It takes lots of practice to learn how to follow birds in flight, keep them in focus, adjust exposures on the fly, zoom in and out as needed, and make instant decisions about composition.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 20, 2020 | Travels and Stories, Wildlife Photography
Tule elk bulls in fog, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, California
This photograph is from very deep in my archives: 1988. At that point I had only been photographing seriously for a few years. Claudia and I met in ’84, got married in ’86, and in ’88 were both working at The Ansel Adams Gallery and living in Yosemite Valley.
In those early years the main focus of my photography was wildlife. I also photographed landscapes and other nature subjects, but wildlife was my passion. I used to spend hours in the wonderful Yosemite Research Library, reading studies about wildlife habitats and animal behavior.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 13, 2012 | Wildlife Photography
1. Ross's geese taking flight in the fog
I’ve had a love affair and obsession with snow geese, along with their close cousins Ross’s geese, for 25 years. Watching a large flock of these birds take flight, filling the sky from horizon to horizon while deafening your ears with their calls, is an unforgettable, transcendent experience.
I’ve photographed these birds in every way imaginable over the years. You can see more images of them in my album of bird photographs on Google+, including some deliberate blurs, and a flash-blur. Last Wednesday and Thursday Claudia and I drove down to the San Joaquin Valley once again to photograph birds. This time I focused on capturing ethereal images of geese in the fog, and tried looking straight into the late-afternoon sun. I’ve included some notes on the accompanying photos a little further down.
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