by Michael Frye | Jan 1, 2014 | Announcements
Happy New Year! I hope you’ve recovered from your New Year’s Eve celebrations. 😉
Like champagne, Times Square, and Auld Lang Syne, it’s become 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 49 of my best photographs from 2013 below, in chronological order. 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 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 3rd, 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 three years I went with the votes because, well, we’re all better at judging other people’s photographs than our own.
Thanks for your input — I appreciate your help!
—Michael Frye
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Dec 30, 2013 | Announcements
Oak tree and lunar eclipse sequence, Mariposa County, Sierra foothills, CA, USA
One of my most popular posts this year was a recent one, called Moonstruck. This article focused on how to capture moonrise and moonset photographs, with a discussion about how to predict the moon’s movements, and apps that can help with figuring out the precise position of the sun and moon.
While the Moonstruck article focused on photographing moonrises and moonsets, I’ve also written about photographing by moonlight. Tips for Photographing Lunar Rainbows delves into the specifics of moonlight photography: camera settings, shutter speeds, and how to focus in the dark. And in another post from 2012 I described the experience of photographing lunar rainbows in Yosemite, first with the crowds of photographers in Cook’s Meadow, then along the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail. And then late last year I wrote about my most memorable New Year’s Eve, and how that inspired me to make a photograph of the Three Brothers by moonlight.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Oct 27, 2013 | Advanced Techniques, Photography Tips
Aspens and morning sunlight, Inyo NF, CA, USA
I’ve always felt that the best photographs capture a mood or feeling. It’s easier to convey a mood when the weather gets stormy, but how do you capture a mood on a clear, sunny day? The answer, I think, is to go with it—to emphasize the sun, the blue sky, and the brightness of the day. Find the visual elements that say “beautiful, sunny day,” and highlight them.
One way of doing this is to include the sun in the frame. Nothing says “sunny and bright” like the sun itself. But putting the sun in your photograph brings challenges. First, you’re likely to get lens flare. This is not the end of the world—in fact, many photographs use lens flare to great effect—but sometimes the flare can be distracting. The other challenge is getting the exposure right.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Oct 25, 2013 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Autumn along a creek in the eastern Sierra Nevada, Inyo NF, CA, USA
I just returned home after spending nearly two weeks on the eastern side of the Sierra. It was fun spending so much time among all the yellow and orange leaves, and we had two wonderful groups for our workshops.
We had cooler-than-average weather in September and early October, which set things turning early this year. Despite that, there was still a lot of color around the June Lake Loop and lower Lundy Canyon when we left on Wednesday. This image, from Wednesday morning, shows the diversity of eastern-Sierra habitats, with a creek, aspens, willows, and sagebrush-covered hillside.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Oct 13, 2013 | Photography Tips
Autumn aspens, Conway Summit, Inyo NF, CA, USA
Here are two photographs I made last week near Conway Summit on the eastern side of the Sierra. The first one, above, is from Tuesday afternoon, with soft backlight filtering through thin clouds and making the leaves glow. The second image, below, was made Wednesday morning under overcast skies as the snow started to fall. I used a fast shutter speed (1/90th sec.) to freeze the motion of the snowflakes, which created a faint white dot pattern across the frame.
(more…)
