In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Aug 6, 2013 | Light and Weather, Photography Tips, Vision and Creativity
Dogwood blossoms, Yosemite. These backlit flowers stand out cleanly against a dark, shaded background.
Light Against Dark
Many of the most effective photographs share a simple lighting concept: they either place a light subject against a dark background, or a dark subject against a light background.
This first photograph of two dogwood blossoms is a perfect example of a light subject against a dark background. In fact the background isn’t just dark; it’s completely black, so there’s nothing to compete visually with the flowers. The contrast creates a simple and dramatic image.
This light-against-dark situation is what makes photographs of Horsetail Fall so striking when conditions are right. The waterfall stands out because it’s brighter than the surrounding cliffs – and, of course, because of the color.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 22, 2013 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Half Dome and clouds, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
Many people, including me, had high hopes for the snowstorm that came through Yosemite on Tuesday. The forecast called for six to twelve inches of snow, so it sounded like we would see some beautiful snow scenes, and maybe even get to photograph a clearing storm. And some moisture might help revive Horsetail Fall.
Around sunset on Tuesday it started snowing at my house in Mariposa — first lightly, then heavily. In no time we had three or four inches of snow, and eventually got six inches, which is a lot for our 2700-foot elevation.
But the storm looked very compact on radar, and the precipitation didn’t seem to be reaching Yosemite. I called my friend Kirk Keeler, who lives in Yosemite Valley, and he told me that they had received only half an inch of snow.
Wednesday morning Claudia and I cleared the snow off our car and drove up to Yosemite Valley. We found an inch or two of snow — not a lot, but enough to highlight every tree branch. I saw many beautiful scenes with trees etched in snow, including the pattern of cottonwood branches below.
The morning was clear, but later some evaporation clouds started to appear, and they kept building. By the end of the day all the cliffs were hidden by clouds. But between 4:00 to 4:30 in the afternoon Half Dome and the clouds put on a great show. Half Dome would vanish completely, then reappear, wrapped in clouds and speckled with sunlight. I made the photograph above just before Half Dome disappeared for good.
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by Michael Frye | Jan 23, 2013 | Composition, Vision and Creativity
El Capitan and the Merced River, autumn, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
Depth can be a powerful tool in photography. Our medium is two-dimensional, but a sense of depth, an illusion of space and distance, can make the viewer feel like part of the scene, and literally and figuratively add another dimension to a photograph.
A Common Formula
This image of El Capitan follows a common formula for creating a three-dimensional effect in landscape photographs: find an interesting foreground (preferably with some leading lines), get the camera low and close to that foreground, and use a wide-angle lens.
A wide-angle lens by itself can’t create a sense of depth. Wide-angle lenses make things look smaller, and therefore more distant, but if everything looks small and distant there’s no sense of depth. The 3-D effect only happens when you put the wide-angle lens close to something in the foreground. That proximity makes the foreground look big, but things in the background still look small. The optics create an exaggerated size difference between near and far objects, and our brains interpret that as depth and distance.
This wide-angle, near-far look is common today, but it wasn’t always so. Though he wasn’t the first to use this perspective, master landscape photographer David Muench popularized this technique through his many beautiful books, and a lot of people have followed his lead.
But this look has become so popular that I think landscape photographers have stopped looking for other ways to create a sense of depth, and by doing that we’ve limited our options. We owe it to ourselves and our viewers to explore other paths, and create images with depth and meaning that go beyond this one formula.
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by Michael Frye | Jan 1, 2013 | Announcements
Happy New Year! To all my readers, thank you so much for your readership, support, and participation during the last year. I really appreciate how so many of you have taken time out of your busy schedules to read this blog and write thoughtful comments. I look forward to another great year in 2013!
It’s becoming a New Year’s tradition on this blog to pick out my best images from the past year, and once again I’m inviting you to help make these difficult choices. I’ve posted 50 of my best photographs from 2012 below, and after you look through these please post a comment listing your ten favorites. (Click on the images to see them larger.) Once the votes are in I’ll put the top ten or twelve on this blog, and submit the finalists to Jim Goldstein’s blog project, where he’ll be showcasing the best images of the year from over 100 photographers. The voting deadline is Friday, January 4th at midnight Pacific time.
As always I reserve the right to override the votes if one of my favorites gets panned. But I have yet to exercise this power — the last two years I thought your choices were so good I just went with the votes.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 7, 2012 | Announcements
Clearing storm, dusk, Tunnel View, Yosemite
I’m pleased to announce that The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite will be presenting an exhibition of my photographs from January 6th to March 2nd, 2013. The show will be titled “Yosemite Meditations,” and will feature new work and some of my classic Yosemite images.
There will be a reception at the Gallery on Saturday, February 16th from noon to 2:00 p.m. — early enough for photographers to attend the reception and still have time to photograph Horsetail Fall afterward. I hope to see some of you there — mark the date on your calendar!
— Michael Frye
