In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Nov 26, 2023 | Vision and Creativity
Swirling leaves, Inyo NF, California. (See the text for a detailed description of this photo.)
In between our visits to the Pacific Northwest Claudia and I spent a little time in the Eastern Sierra, and close to home in Yosemite. Last year I was in New Zealand in October, and I missed our local autumn, so it was nice to catch a bit of autumn glow in some of our favorite places.
When photographing familiar locations it’s easy to get jaded and think, “I’ve done all this before.” But actually you haven’t. No place is ever exactly the same, because things are always changing. And you’ve changed too; you’re not the same person, or the same photographer, as the last time you were there.
When I go back to a familiar spot, I often ask myself what’s changed – what’s different about the conditions that might create new opportunities. What’s happening now that’s interesting or unusual? It could be the light, the weather, fall color, flowers, water levels, beavers flooding a grove of aspens, a riverbank eroding… nothing ever stays the same.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 22, 2023 | Announcements
Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I know most people around the world don’t celebrate this holiday, or do so in a different form, or on a different day.
But regardless of whether you honor the traditions of this particular day, I think there’s value in gratitude – to giving thanks for all the things we have to be grateful for. We really should do that every day, but it’s good to have that reminder once a year.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 16, 2023 | Advanced Techniques, Vision and Creativity
Misty sunset on the Oregon Coast. 73mm, 8 seconds at f/16, ISO 100, ND filter.
Claudia and I have been spending a lot of time in the Pacific Northwest this year, which is great, as I love this part of the world. We just finished a workshop along the Oregon Coast, and now we’re making our way to Bellingham, Washington, to visit our son and daughter-in-law, and stopping to see friends along the way.
The workshop was a lot of fun. A great group of people, and we saw some beautiful light, as well as big waves crashing against the shore.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 5, 2023 | Travels and Stories
Barred owl, Olympic NP, Washington
My previous two posts focused on autumn color on the Olympic Peninsula, but it’s a diverse and beautiful area, and I made many photographs that didn’t involve fall color. The forests are quite photogenic even without fall leaves, plus some of my favorite images from the trip were made along the coast. And one of the highlights of our trip was photographing a barred owl.
We found this owl while driving along a back road early one morning. The owl took off from a log next to the road and flew into a nearby tree. I didn’t have my camera out, so we backed up to where the owl couldn’t see us. Then I stepped out of the car, grabbed my camera and 100-400mm lens, climbed into the passenger seat (the owl was on the right), and got everything set.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 2, 2023 | Travels and Stories
Vine maple and alders, autumn, Olympic NP, Washington
My previous post featured mostly images that combined fall color with the moss- and lichen-draped branches that Olympic National Park is known for. I like those juxtapositions, as they’re so characteristic of that area. But we found lots of other interesting juxtapositions as well.
One thing I kept looking for was groves of alders. Alders often form great patterns, with leaning, criss-crossing, light-colored trunks spotted with patches of moss or lichen. But while alders are deciduous trees, their leaves don’t turn color in the fall. Alders just drop their leaves while they’re still green. Even without that color, however, their patterns and structure make them worth photographing, and sometimes (like in the photo above) I was able to juxtapose maples with alder trunks. (Why don’t alder leaves turn color? No one really knows, but here’s one possible explanation.)
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by Michael Frye | Oct 29, 2023 | Composition, Travels and Stories
Vine maples and big-leaf maples, autumn, Olympic NP, Washington
Earlier this month, Claudia and I spent about two weeks on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Part of that time I was co-leading a workshop for Visionary Wild with Jerry Dodrill, which was super fun. We had a great, lively group of people, and beautiful conditions, with lots of fall color, and a gorgeous sunset on the beach.
This was our second trip to the Olympic Peninsula this year, and we loved both visits. There’s something about temperate rain forests that seems to strike a chord with me, whether on the Olympic Peninsula, in the redwoods, or on the west coast of New Zealand.
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by Michael Frye | Oct 19, 2023 | Digital Darkroom
Aspens and bigtooth maples, northern Utah. I used the new Point Color tool to tweak the originally dull-looking greens and yellows in this photo and make them more vibrant.
Last week Adobe launched major updates to Lightroom Classic (13.0), Lightroom Desktop (7.0), and Lightroom Mobile (9.0). The biggest new features are HDR editing, Point Color, and Lens Blur.
All of these new tools deserve their own post, but we just finished a workshop, and we’re still traveling, so for now I’m just going to explain a few of the salient features, and steer you to some more in-depth information.
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by Michael Frye | Oct 1, 2023 | Travels and Stories
White-lined sphinx moth and larkspur, Yosemite NP, California. 200mm, 1/4000 sec. at f/16, ISO 1250.
Summer arrived late this year in the Sierra high country, as the prodigious amounts of snow left over from last winter took awhile to melt. Snowmelt, mosquitos, and wildflower blooms all started and ended at least a month later than normal.
But that meant that summer lingered longer as well; we were still finding lots of flowers in late August.
And something about the timing of everything, or the great abundance of flowers, seemed to suit the white-lined sphinx moths. Claudia and I started seeing lots of these moths, along with their caterpillars, during July in the Eastern Sierra, and kept finding them anywhere we saw flowers for a good two months afterward.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 3, 2023 | Composition
Ripples and reflections in an alpine lake, Inyo NF, California. 227mm, 1/125 sec. at f/22, ISO 1250.
During our Range of Light workshop in July we found some striking reflections in a mountain lake. These weren’t mirror reflections, because a nearby cascade was pouring into the lake, rippling the surface of the water. But that’s actually what made the reflections so interesting. The ripples created squiggly lines and shapes in the water, as the surface reflected blue sky and late-day, golden light shining on rocks and snowbanks across the lake.
It was a great situation for making abstract images, so I encouraged our participants to zoom in with a long lens to try to capture the patterns. While I often like using slow shutter speeds for water images, capturing these ripples required fast shutter speeds to freeze the water’s motion and preserve the intricate patterns. And the patterns would be more prominent if everything was in focus, which required stopping down the aperture to get as much depth of field as possible.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 29, 2023 | Light and Weather, Yosemite Photo Conditions
Sunbeams, Half Dome, and Nevada Fall from Glacier Point, Yosemite NP, California
As the remnants of Tropical Storm Hilary moved through California, I looked for opportunities to photograph interesting weather. I thought we might get thunderstorms, which we did, especially as the first bands of moisture reached our area. But I wasn’t able to find a thunderstorm in the right position to photograph it. We did, however, get three-quarters of an inch of rain at our house from one thunderstorm.
Then, as this large weather system moved off to the north, I realized there might be a chance to photograph a clearing storm Monday morning (August 21st). It looked like the rain would end around sunrise in Yosemite; it was less clear whether the clouds would dissipate enough for the sun to break through that early.
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