by Michael Frye | Jun 23, 2019 | Composition
Storm clouds over Half Dome and Nevada Fall from Glacier Point, Yosemite
When we look at a photograph our eyes are usually drawn to light areas, bright colors, and contrast. Therefore I always try to avoid having bright spots, vivid colors, or anything contrasty and eye-catching along the edges of my photographs. I’d rather put the most visually-prominent elements closer to the middle of the picture, to draw the viewer’s eye into the frame, rather than out of it.
I was very conscious of that last Monday when composing the photograph above. Thunderstorms had formed over the Sierra crest, so Claudia and I drove up to Glacier Point, hoping to photograph some interesting weather. We arrived just as a thunderstorm was approaching from the northeast, bringing dark, dramatic clouds. There was no sunlight, but the sky had great textures, and lent a nice, stormy mood to the scene. I used my widest lens (16mm) to include as much of that brooding sky as possible.
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by Michael Frye | May 19, 2019 | Light and Weather
Clearing storm, spring, Yosemite, 7:27 a.m. Friday. Five auto-bracketed frames, two stops apart, blended with Lightroom’s HDR Merge.
We’re having some unusual weather for May. Higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada received over a foot of snow on Thursday. A second storm brought more rain and upper-elevation snow last night. A third storm is forecast to arrive on Tuesday, with another storm possibly coming on Friday.
This kind of weather pattern is fairly common during California’s winter rainy season. In May, as the summer dry season approaches, it’s not unusual to see a small system come through and deliver some light rain. But a series of strong, wet, cold storms like this is practically unheard of.
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by Michael Frye | Apr 21, 2019 | Composition
Poppies, goldfileds, owl’s clover, and spring gold, southern Sierra Nevada, California. There were two compositional challenges here: the physical distance between the foreground and background flowers, plus the lack of any distinguishing features in the foreground that could serve as a focal point. I found this slightly-elevated vantage point where I could show the sweep of owl’s clover leading up to the hills, allowing me to fill most of the frame with flowers, so that solved the first problem. And then I spotted this small clump of yellow flowers (spring gold), which added a foreground focal point, and tied in visually with the yellow colors in the background. 27mm, 1/10th of a second at f/16, ISO 800.
It’s been a good year for wildflowers in California – above average in some places, and exceptional in a few spots.
One of those places that seemed to be having an exceptionally-good year was Antelope Valley, so after our Death Valley workshop Claudia and I made a quick trip down there. We had seen poppies in Antelope Valley back in the late ’80s, but hadn’t been back since, so this seemed like a good time for a return visit. And the flowers were amazing. In the sun the combination of bright, red-orange poppies and yellow goldfields was downright blinding. It actually hurt my eyes to look directly at the flowers.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 13, 2019 | Light and Weather
Stormy skies over the valley, Yosemite, Sunday evening
We’ve had one storm after another here in the Sierra Nevada. Two more storms came through this past weekend, back to back. They were cold systems, so it snowed in Yosemite Valley, with about five inches on Friday night, and another eight or nine inches on Saturday night and Sunday morning – all on top of at least 18 inches left over from the previous series of storms. The valley was quite a snowy place.
I kept checking the weather last weekend to see whether there might be a break between the first and second storms. All signs pointed to a partial break late on Saturday morning, but there seemed to be a slight chance that the storm might clear closer to sunrise on Saturday, so I drove up early – only to wait as a shower rolled in and dumped heavy snow for an hour.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 7, 2019 | Light and Weather
Ice-coated oaks at sunset, Mariposa County, CA, USA
California got hit by a big storm. It was actually a series of storms that started last Friday and ended late Tuesday, but it felt like one long storm because there was little break between the systems. We didn’t see the sun in Mariposa from Friday until Tuesday.
Yosemite Valley received 8 1/2 inches of precipitation (rain and snow equivalent) since Friday. That’s the largest amount I remember seeing over such a short period. (There was probably more rain during the ’97 flood, but I didn’t pay attention to the rain totals then).
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