by Michael Frye | Jan 22, 2015 | Vision and Creativity
Oak, sun, and fog, Sierra Nevada foothills
As regular readers know, I love fog. It’s a little like snow in the way it can transform an ordinary landscape into something dreamlike.
We’ve had a lot of interesting fog around here lately. Last week the fog was very dense in the Central Valley, sometimes persisting all day rather than burning off in the afternoon. One morning we made an early trip into the lower foothills of Mariposa County, an area with rolling, grassy hills and scattered oaks (I’ve posted images from there before). I was hoping that the fog would be thick enough to push up from the Central Valley into these foothills, and it was – just barely. We were right on the edge of the fog, which was actually perfect – foggy enough to create a misty, ethereal mood, but not so foggy that it completely obscured the landscape.
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by Michael Frye | Jan 8, 2015 | Vision and Creativity
Sunrise in a San Joaquin Valley marsh, California, December 18th
I’m grateful to live near Yosemite Valley, one of the world’s most spectacular landscapes. But in photography, light is more important than subject. My most popular image of 2014 featured an orchard in the Sacramento Valley – with exceptional light. I’d rather photograph an “ordinary” scene in great light than an extraordinary scene in dull light.
Last month Claudia and made an early-morning drive to one of the wildlife refuges in the flat-as-a-table-top expanse of the San Joaquin Valley. I was hoping for fog, which is common on winter mornings in the Central Valley. Instead, I found the beautiful clouds and reflections shown in the photograph above. In this case, the flat landscape helped, making it possible to catch the orange ball of the sun just as it crested the horizon. The light, clouds, colors, and reflections helped to convey a nice early-day mood.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 14, 2014 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Cloud formations, approaching storm, Mariposa, Thursday
It was windy last Thursday as the big storm was approaching. Walking from my office toward the house I noticed some unusual clouds to the southwest. I didn’t make it to the house; I grabbed my camera bag and tripod, climbed the small hill behind my office, and spent the next half hour photographing clouds.
The clouds overhead were dark, but I could see clear skies to the southwest. The light from that clear patch created a beautiful golden glow on the underside of the clouds, as if it were sunset, even though it was just past noon. The wind probably helped create the sculptured patterns. There was no compelling foreground to put under the clouds, and besides, the most interesting patterns were rather small and distant, so I used my 70-200 zoom to pick out sections of clouds with interesting designs. The photograph below looks a bit HDR, but it was actually the opposite – I increased the contrast, rather than decreasing it.
The storm stalled over the Bay Area that afternoon, and didn’t reach Mariposa until midnight. So while areas near the coast dealt with flooding and power outages, we got a bit less rain and snow than expected. Yosemite Valley received just under two inches of rain, which was a good soaking, but not a deluge. As this precipitation map shows, while many areas around California have received above-average precipitation for the last six months, the Sierra Nevada is still below average. And that’s just the last six months, which doesn’t include the three preceding dry winters. So this storm helped, but we have a long way to go.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 21, 2014 | Composition, Vision and Creativity
Half Dome at sunset from Tunnel View, Yosemite. The dramatic light might grab your attention here, but the interlocking diagonal lines create a cohesive design and a sense of energy.
One of the keys to learning composition is to think abstractly. As Ian Plant says in his excellent ebook about composition, Visual Flow, “Learning to think abstractly about visual elements is the single most important thing you can do to improve your compositional skills.” The less you think about the subject, and the more you think about the underlying abstract design – the lines, shapes, and patterns – the better your compositions will be.
It’s often easier to think abstractly when photographing a small subject, like a pattern of leaves, or a series of cracks in ice. But it’s just as important to look for repeating lines and shapes in big, sweeping landscapes. One of the most common – and powerful – designs in these big scenes is a series of interlocking diagonal lines. Most hilly or mountainous areas have an abundance of diagonals, and diagonal lines give a photograph a sense of dynamic energy and motion – a perfect fit for dramatic landscape images.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 13, 2014 | Composition, Light and Weather, Vision and Creativity
Aspens in fog near Ridgway, CO
Claudia and I have been busy since our trip to Colorado in early October, so I haven’t had a chance to post more images from our travels until now. But maybe that’s a good thing, as that time has given me a chance to reflect on the journey.
It had been a dream of mine to photograph the autumn aspen display in Colorado, and it more than lived up to my expectations. Colorado veterans said it was the best fall there in many years, and it certainly looked good to us. The sheer number of aspens covering the hillsides was astonishing.
The problem was that I didn’t know the area. At all. I’m usually writing about photographing Yosemite, or maybe the aspens on the eastern side of the Sierra, places that I know intimately. That knowledge is a big advantage, giving me a greater chance of being in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the light, weather, and conditions.
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