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 | Nov 16, 2016 | Announcements
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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by Michael Frye | Nov 6, 2016 | Composition, Vision and Creativity
Autumn forest with dogwoods and ferns, Yosemite, October 13th. I stood on a log to see over the foreground dogwoods and into the forest; the focal length was 35mm.
I’ve made many images of intimate landscapes over the years, and the vast majority of them were taken with a telephoto lens (usually my 70-200mm zoom). It makes sense to use a lens with a narrower angle of view when focusing on a small piece of the landscape and trying to eliminate clutter in complex forest scenes. Telephoto lenses are also great for compressing space and emphasizing patterns – typically key components of intimate landscapes.
But lately I’ve found myself using wide-angle lenses more and more for smaller scenes. Part of the impetus for this was just buying a new lens. This past July I purchased a new wide-angle zoom (the Sony Vario-Tessar FE 16-35mm f/4 ZA OSS), and it’s natural to want to use and test a new piece of equipment, so I started pulling this lens out in many situations just to see what it could do. But another part of the impetus was just the desire to do something different. I’ve had plenty of practice composing intimate landscapes with telephoto lenses, and I wanted to force myself to look at these scenes in a new way.
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by Michael Frye | Oct 30, 2016 | Night Photography
Mobius Arch at night, Alabama Hills, CA, USA
We just finished a nighttime workshop in the Trona Pinnacles and Alabama Hills. The forecast for our last evening wasn’t promising, calling for mostly cloudy skies and a 70 percent chance of showers. But I told the group that as long as it wasn’t raining there was still a lot we could do, and if we got just a few small breaks in the cloud cover the mix of stars and clouds could be really beautiful.
As sunset approached we headed out to the famous Mobius Arch in the Alabama Hills. We photographed some interesting cloud formations in late-afternoon light, then at dusk set up our cameras to frame the arch with the sky above. The skies were mostly cloudy, just as predicted. Radar images showed showed heavy rain falling west of the Sierra crest. But from our position in the Alabama Hills, in the rain shadow created by the mountain wall, a patch of sky to our west-soutwest stayed partially clear, and remained that way most of the evening. Something about the trajectory of the wind and rain created that rift in the clouds and kept it in place.
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by Michael Frye | Oct 23, 2016 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Autumn hillside, Bishop Creek Canyon
We just finished our Eastern Sierra Fall Color workshop, and start another workshop tomorrow, so I just have time for a quick post. But we had a lot of fun last week with our group. Autumn arrived early on the east side, and then a storm came through just before the workshop, closing many Sierra passes and blowing leaves off the trees. But we still found some beautiful color; I’ve included a few photographs here made during and just before the workshop.
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