In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Mar 4, 2024 | Announcements
Lightning over the San Joaquin Valley from the Sierra Nevada foothills, California
What elevates a photograph beyond the ordinary? Light, composition, and technical proficiency all play parts, but is there something more?
I think so. The photographs that I respond to most strongly go beyond just showing what a scene looks like, and touch me on an emotional level. They suggest something bigger, more universal than the literal subject matter depicted in the image. They evoke a sense of mystery, or wonder, or awe, or surprise me by showing the world in an unexpected way.
I think this is such an important aspect of photography, so I’m really looking forward to delving into this topic more in my presentation for Nic Stover’s Nature Photography Classes next Monday. The presentation is called A Sense of Mystery, and focuses on those hard-to-define components that make a photograph richer, and give it more universal meaning. I’ll talk about the what, and the how – what elevates a photograph beyond the ordinary, and how you can make images that convey a sense of mystery and wonder.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Dec 31, 2023 | Announcements
Happy New Year! Once again I’m inviting you, my faithful blog readers, to help me choose my best photographs from the past year. I’ve posted 45 of my favorite images from 2023 below, in chronological order. After you look through these, please use the form at the bottom of this post to list your ten favorites.
Voting is closed! I’ll be posting the results soon.
You don’t have to list your ten favorites in any order; just pick up to ten images. (The numbers are in the captions underneath the photographs. Also, you can click on the images to see them larger.) Once the votes are in I’ll post the top ten or twelve on this blog.
As always, I reserve the right to override the votes if one of my favorites gets panned. But I’ve rarely had to exercise this power because my readers have excellent taste. 🙂
Thanks for your input — I appreciate your help!
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Nov 26, 2023 | Vision and Creativity
Swirling leaves, Inyo NF, California. (See the text for a detailed description of this photo.)
In between our visits to the Pacific Northwest Claudia and I spent a little time in the Eastern Sierra, and close to home in Yosemite. Last year I was in New Zealand in October, and I missed our local autumn, so it was nice to catch a bit of autumn glow in some of our favorite places.
When photographing familiar locations it’s easy to get jaded and think, “I’ve done all this before.” But actually you haven’t. No place is ever exactly the same, because things are always changing. And you’ve changed too; you’re not the same person, or the same photographer, as the last time you were there.
When I go back to a familiar spot, I often ask myself what’s changed – what’s different about the conditions that might create new opportunities. What’s happening now that’s interesting or unusual? It could be the light, the weather, fall color, flowers, water levels, beavers flooding a grove of aspens, a riverbank eroding… nothing ever stays the same.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Oct 1, 2023 | Travels and Stories
White-lined sphinx moth and larkspur, Yosemite NP, California. 200mm, 1/4000 sec. at f/16, ISO 1250.
Summer arrived late this year in the Sierra high country, as the prodigious amounts of snow left over from last winter took awhile to melt. Snowmelt, mosquitos, and wildflower blooms all started and ended at least a month later than normal.
But that meant that summer lingered longer as well; we were still finding lots of flowers in late August.
And something about the timing of everything, or the great abundance of flowers, seemed to suit the white-lined sphinx moths. Claudia and I started seeing lots of these moths, along with their caterpillars, during July in the Eastern Sierra, and kept finding them anywhere we saw flowers for a good two months afterward.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Aug 29, 2023 | Light and Weather, Yosemite Photo Conditions
Sunbeams, Half Dome, and Nevada Fall from Glacier Point, Yosemite NP, California
As the remnants of Tropical Storm Hilary moved through California, I looked for opportunities to photograph interesting weather. I thought we might get thunderstorms, which we did, especially as the first bands of moisture reached our area. But I wasn’t able to find a thunderstorm in the right position to photograph it. We did, however, get three-quarters of an inch of rain at our house from one thunderstorm.
Then, as this large weather system moved off to the north, I realized there might be a chance to photograph a clearing storm Monday morning (August 21st). It looked like the rain would end around sunrise in Yosemite; it was less clear whether the clouds would dissipate enough for the sun to break through that early.
(more…)
