by Michael Frye | Mar 22, 2022 | Travels and Stories
Last light on sand dunes, Mojave Desert, California
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I love sand dunes. Dunes make great photographic subjects, but it’s more than that. I love just being in the dunes. When walking out to the Mesquite Flat Dunes in Death Valley, there’s this moment when you move off of the surrounding salt crust and onto the sand, and suddenly it seems as if you’re in a different world – a special realm that’s magical, beautiful, and a little surreal.
Children also love sand dunes of course. What kid wouldn’t love playing in a giant sandbox? When our son Kevin was little we took him to sand dunes whenever possible – not just in Death Valley, but to the Oceano Dunes along the California Coast, to the Kelso Dunes, and to the Imperial Dunes near the border with Mexico. He loved playing the sand, and when he was old enough we took him up the highest dune in the Mesquite Flat Dunes, which was a great adventure, and big accomplishment for him.
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by Michael Frye | Mar 16, 2022 | Light and Weather
Dunes in a sandstorm, Death Valley, California. Made before our workshop from a spot overlooking the dunes. I used my longest lens here (400mm), and even then had to crop this slightly. A brief lull in the wind allowed me to use a slowish shutter speed (1/10th sec.) at 100 ISO and get a sharp photo. As you can see, some photographers did make it out to the dunes that morning. One of them is kneeling down to take a picture, which I wouldn’t recommend, as there’s a hundred times more sand blowing around at ground level than at eye level in conditions like this. 400mm, 1/10 sec. at f/11, ISO 100.
Claudia and I just got back from spending another two weeks in Death Valley. This time I was teaching a workshop for Visionary Wild with my co-instructor Jerry Dodrill.
Jerry, Claudia and I scouted together before the workshop, and hung out and explored a bit afterward. Jerry is a super nice guy, and a great photographer and teacher (you can find his website here, and Instagram feed here). We really enjoyed spending time together and teaching together, and our workshop group was wonderful, which made it all even more fun.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 17, 2022 | Advanced Techniques, Vision and Creativity
Creek and sea stack, sunrise, Oregon Coast. I used a slow shutter speed (30 seconds) to smooth the waves, which simplified the scene by eliminating texture in the water, and helped create a more ethereal quality to the image.
In one of my posts about Yellowstone last fall I talked about my attraction to dynamic landscapes. And Yellowstone is certainly dynamic, with its ever-changing array of spouting geysers and steaming vents.
But seascapes might be even more dynamic. In addition to the usual variables of landscape photography – light and weather – there’s the ocean itself. Tides, wave height, wave direction, and wind all have big effects on the way a scene looks. And no two waves are the same, so one moment will often look quite different from the next.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 6, 2022 | Composition
Luminous ravine, Death Valley, California. The repeating diagonals and V-shapes create a strong pattern, while the curve of the ravine adds another design element.
Death Valley’s landscapes are elemental. You’re often photographing bare earth: rocks, sand, dirt, mud, and salt. Those things don’t sound very photogenic – not like, say, photographing a snowy mountain peak, or a rugged sea coast.
But in photography, light, composition, and design are more important than the subject. You can have a great subject (like that snowy mountain peak, for example), but if the light or composition are mediocre the photograph will be mediocre as well. On the other hand, a “mundane” subject can make an amazing photograph – with good light and a strong design.
Death Valley is full of “mundane” subjects like rocks, salt flats, badlands, and piles of sand. But wind and water have sculpted those elements into wonderful shapes and patterns. It’s a great place to learn to think abstractly. In other words, instead of thinking about subjects, you can concentrate on finding lines, shapes, and patterns, and putting those elements together to create strong designs.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 3, 2022 | Uncategorized
There’s still time to sign up for the Night Photo Summit! It starts tomorrow (Friday) morning at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time.
My presentation is called Expressive Night Photography, and that’s just a small part of the lineup, with topics like Night on Earth by the legendary Art Wolfe, Creating Realistic Landscape/Milky Way Blends by Tim Cooper, a light-painting session with Chris Nicholson, Fantastical Fireflies with Kevin Adams, Rafael Pons on using PhotoPills, capturing and processing the Milky Way, and many more.
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