In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog

Another Ansel Adams Gallery Print Sale!

Half Dome and North Dome at sunrise from the Four-Mile Trail, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Half Dome and North Dome at sunrise from the Four-Mile Trail, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Just in time for Black Friday The Ansel Adams Gallery is sponsoring another special print sale of two of my photographs, at 25% off the normal price. The two images we selected for this offer are Half Dome and North Dome from the Four-Mile Trail, Yosemite, and El Capitan by Moonlight, Yosemite. I’ve posted these two photographs on this blog before, of course – in fact El Capitan by Moonlight was selected by you, my readers, as one of my ten best photographs of 2015, getting the third-most votes. But these two images have never been exhibited at a gallery or sold before.

My signed, matted, limited-edition 16×20 prints usually sell for $325, but during this sale you can get one for only $244. Or you can purchase a 20×24 print, normally $475, for only $356. This is a rare chance to purchase one of my photographs at a reduced price, but the sale lasts just one week, until Tuesday, November 29th, at 6:00 PM Pacific time. Visit the Ansel Adams Gallery website to purchase a print or get more details.

Here are the stories behind the photographs:
 

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Six Essential Camera Settings for Landscape Photographers

Sunset at Tenaya Lake, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Sunset at Tenaya Lake, Yosemite. It’s important to check the red channel in the histogram when photographing warm, saturated colors like this.

Every camera has default settings that seem to have been designed for beginning photographers who are handholding the camera. When teaching workshops I frequently dive into the menus on student’s cameras to change those settings (with their permission of course) to ones more suitable for landscape photographers working on a tripod. And the students usually tell me they wished they’d known about those settings sooner.

So here are six camera settings that I urge you to consider changing. These changes will make operating the camera easier, and in some cases might be the difference between getting the shot and missing it.

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Craft and Vision Sale

A small waterfall in Yosemite NP, CA, USA

A small waterfall in Yosemite. This photo was used for the fifth example in my Exposure for Outdoor Photography ebook, where I discuss using slow shutter speeds.

Black Friday arrived early at Craft & Vision, and everything is 50% off until midnight on Saturday. That discount includes Exposure for Outdoor Photography, my ebook about understanding the essential technical fundamentals of photography. The book starts with a comprehensive discussion of histograms and the different ways of adjusting exposure, then goes deeper by taking you through ten practical, real-life examples where I’ve used these basic principles to control the exposure, the sharpness, and the photograph’s message. Normally the book is only $5.00, but through Saturday it’s only $2.50, which is quite a steal!

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Yosemite Renaissance Deadline Extended

Ice on Shell Lake, Inyo NF, CA, USA

Ice on Shell Lake, Inyo National Forest; from the 2009 Yosemite Renaissance exhibit

This is a quick post to let you know that the deadline for entering the 32nd annual Yosemite Renaissance competition and exhibit has been extended to November 20th, so you still have time to enter. You can find out all the details and enter online here.

This is a great organization and competition, and the opening reception (February 24th, 2017) is always a really fun event. The competition is “intended to encourage diverse artistic interpretations of Yosemite.” I’ve been honored to have my photographs accepted into the Yosemite Renaissance exhibit a number of times, and always felt I was in good company with many wonderful artists in each show. The photograph above was in the 2009 exhibit.

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Moonrise over the Cathedral Range

Moonrise over the Cathedral Range from May Lake, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Moonrise over the Cathedral Range from May Lake, Yosemite

There’s been a lot of talk about the “supermoon.” The moon will be full tomorrow morning at 5:52 a.m. here on the west coast, and will be the closest, largest full moon since 1948. The moon will be 7% larger and 15% brighter than the average full moon – not a huge difference, and not obvious to most observers. Photographically, a small change in focal length has a much larger impact on the apparent size of the moon than how close the moon is to the earth.

Nevertheless, all this talk about the moon (along with some urging from Claudia) got me thinking about photographing it. The Tioga and Glacier Point roads are open, allowing me to reach some areas that are normally inaccessible this time of year. Since the full moon rises further to the north (left) in November than in July, I thought it might be possible to find an interesting juxtaposition of moon and mountains that I wouldn’t see in the summer. After consulting Google Earth and The Photographers’ Ephemeris I decided to go to May Lake yesterday. That seemed like a good spot to see the moon rising over the Cathedral Range – without the smoke from backpacker’s campfires along the lakeshore that you’d usually see in summer.

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