by Michael Frye | Sep 28, 2016 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Aspens, reeds, and reflections, Bishop Creek Canyon, Inyo NF, CA, USA
Claudia and I are over on the eastern side of the Sierra checking out the early fall color. The high-elevation aspens typically start turning over here in late September, and they’re right on schedule, or maybe even a little early compared to some years. We drove up Bishop Creek Canyon yesterday, and found lots of color near the 9,000-foot level around Lake Sabrina and North Lake. I’d say these areas are near peak already, with a few bare trees, and some green, but probably 70 to 80 percent of the aspens turning.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 22, 2016 | Composition
Rocks and reflections along the shore of Tenaya Lake, Yosemite. This image features both curves and circles.
I really like curved lines. I was reminded of this last weekend when my friend Mike Osborne showed me some of his junkyard abstracts on his iPad. All the photographs were wonderful and imaginative, but the ones I liked best often had curves. And many of my own favorite photographs have curves too. Curves look organic, and sensuous, and add a certain visual flow to a photograph that’s hard to generate without them.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 11, 2016 | Night Photography
DeChambeau Hotel and I.O.O.F. Hall at night, Bodie State Historic Park, CA, USA
On the last night of our recent Starry Skies Adventure workshop we went to Bodie, which is always a great place for night photography. As the Milky Way moved into the southwest that evening it lined up well with these two buildings along Main Street, the DeChambeau Hotel and I.O.O.F. (Independent Order of Odd Fellows) Hall. I had never photographed this view of Bodie before so decided to try it, and was joined by several other people in the workshop.
I knew the lighting would be complicated, but that’s part of the fun of photographing Bodie at night. You can do relatively simple light-painting there, or, if you’re up for a challenge, try something complex. Here we wanted make it look as if the buildings were lit from the inside (even though the interiors were locked and inaccessible to us). That’s not really hard to do – just shine flashlights through the windows. The hard part was figuring out how to keep yourself out of the frame while doing so. The solution was to do each part of the lighting in a separate frame, and then mask off the unwanted areas of that frame (like a person holding a flashlight) in Photoshop.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 8, 2016 | Critiques
Yosemite Valley View by Srinivasa Punnamraju
The Photo Critique Series is not dead! It just took a long vacation. 🙂 This time we’ll look at a photograph by Srinivasa Punnamraju from Tunnel View in Yosemite.
Light and Weather
Srinivasa was lucky to catch some dramatic weather at Yosemite’s most iconic location, Tunnel View. There were plenty of interesting clouds overhead, and some nice mottled patterns of light and dark on the cliffs – especially the striped bands on El Capitan to the left.
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by Michael Frye | Sep 7, 2016 | Night Photography
Jeffrey pine and the Milky Way, Yosemite NP, CA
We conducted two more workshops last week, our second editions this summer of the Inside Bodie and Starry Skies Adventure workshops. We had a lot of fun once again, with great conditions and really nice people.
I made this photo on the first night of our Starry Skies workshop near Olmsted Point in Yosemite. Several members of our group and I framed views of this photogenic Jeffrey pine with the Milky Way and Half Dome in the distance. We made some exposures with just starlight, then tried to light the tree with a flashlight. Later we did some more complex lighting, but I ended up liking this simple version with just one flashlight aimed at the tree. We used a homemade snoot on the flashlight to narrow the beam and prevent too much light from spilling onto the rocks below the tree.
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