by Michael Frye | Jun 18, 2017 | Night Photography
Milky Way over sand dunes, Death Valley. This is a six-image panorama, lit with low-level continuous lighting from two LED light panels on stands, and stitched together with Lightroom’s Panorama Merge. See the main text for more details.
It’s been a busy spring, so I have a backlog of images that I haven’t been able to post yet. Among those images are most of the nighttime photos I made during our two Death Valley workshops (as well as beforehand, while scouting). We encountered a lot of wind, which made things challenging. You just don’t want to be out in the dunes when it’s windy, because you and your gear will get sand-blasted. But the wind helped wipe footprints off the sand, and somehow, during both workshops, we managed to get out into the footprint-free dunes on calm, clear, beautiful nights.
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by Michael Frye | Jun 11, 2017 | Light and Weather
Sea stacks at dusk, Redwood NP. After the sun had set we saw this little strip of orange light near the horizon through a gap in the clouds. I used a 10-stop neutral-density filter to lengthen the shutter speed to 30 seconds (at f/8, 200 ISO; focal length 111mm) in order to smooth out the water.
We recently returned from our annual trip to the northwest corner of California, land of fog, ferns, giant redwoods, and wild, rugged stretches of coastline. I always love going back to this area with its damp, primeval moodiness. And once again we had a great time during our workshop, enjoying the wonderful food and atmosphere at the Requa Inn, and spending time with a fun group of participants.
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by Michael Frye | May 21, 2017 | Night Photography, Yosemite Photo Conditions
Moon setting over Yosemite Valley and Horsetail Fall, spring of 2017
Every year, around the third week of February, the sun sets at just the right angle for Horsetail Fall. With clear skies and enough water, the backlit waterfall glows with a brilliant orange color, lit by the setting sun.
Some years ago it occurred to me that the setting moon could create the same effect. In the spring of 2010 I had a chance to try this, and it worked beautifully. As I wrote back then, I walked up to one of my favorite Horsetail Fall viewing locations early in the morning, and saw an amazing sight: that beautiful, low-angle backlight on the waterfall, with the cliff behind it in the shade. It looked like sunset in February, only with stars in the sky above it. And the camera captured what my eyes couldn’t see – the orange glow created by the setting moon:
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by Michael Frye | May 18, 2017 | Announcements
Endless flowers, Carrizo Plain NM, CA, USA
Earlier this spring, Claudia and I, along with our friend Robert, spent five days photographing flowers in Carrizo Plain National Monument. We marveled at the vast fields of flowers. As I wrote in an earlier post, we found acres and acres of tidytips, phacelia, hillside daisies, fiddlenecks, and goldfields, growing together in dense mats, uninterrupted by shrubs or even a blade of grass. We had to tiptoe carefully to avoid crushing flowers at every step.
We saw pronghorn antelope and tule elk, both reintroduced to this area. We saw three endangered San Joaquin kit foxes. It truly seemed as if we’d stepped back in time, and were seeing what California looked like 200 years ago.
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by Michael Frye | May 14, 2017 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Half Dome and oaks in flooded Leidig Meadow. My chest waders came in handy on a couple of occasions. Here I waded into Leidig Meadow to capture these flooded oaks framing Half Dome. (Focal length: 21mm; five bracketed exposures blended with Lightroom’s HDR Merge.)
This past winter brought near-record amounts of snow to the higher elevations of Yosemite, and now all that snow is melting and filling the rivers, creeks, and waterfalls. About a week-and-a-half ago, warm temperatures were predicted to create minor flooding in the Yosemite Valley, so Claudia and I drove up early and found a beautiful, water-filled park. The meadows were partially flooded, and the waterfalls roaring. We hadn’t seen such high water since June of 2011, but this time the deciduous trees still had that fresh, bright-green color, and the dogwoods were still blooming.
We spent a couple of nights in the valley, staying at a friend’s house, and had a great time photographing and just enjoying the park. Here are some images showing the high water, with extended captions.
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