Sunbeams From Tunnel View, Spring, Yosemite National Park, California

For the first time ever, The Ansel Adams Gallery is sponsoring a special print sale of two of my images at 25% off the normal price. These are two recent photographs that have never been printed before, and both are available in two sizes: 16×20 and 20×24. My signed, limited-edition 16×20 prints usually sell for $325, but during this sale you can get one for only $244! Or you can purchase a 20×24 print, normally $475, for only $356! The sale lasts for just six days, until Sunday, October 30th, at 6:00 p.m. Pacific time. Visit the Ansel Adams Gallery web site to purchase or get more details.

The two new images we selected for this offer are Sunbeams From Tunnel View, Spring, Yosemite National Park, California, and Redwoods, Ferns, and Rhododendrons Near the Northern California Coast. Here are their stories:

Sunbeams From Tunnel View, Spring, Yosemite National Park, California

This photograph was made just after sunrise on a May morning. I had risen early and headed for Yosemite Valley, expecting clear, cloudless skies. Instead I found a broken layer of clouds, and decided to drive up to Tunnel View. Over the next half-hour I witnessed an amazing light show as sunbeams broke through the clouds and spilled onto the valley floor, and then finally the sun itself edged around El Capitan. It all seemed unreal—like a special-effects scene from a movie.

I’ve heard people say that it’s easy to take photographs in Yosemite Valley—just point the camera anywhere. But Yosemite is so beautiful that I think it’s actually hard to do it justice. It takes just the right combination of light and weather to infuse a photograph with even a little bit of the beauty and wonder of this place.

Redwoods, Ferns, and Rhododendrons Near the Northern California Coast

Redwoods, Ferns, and Rhododendrons Near the Northern California Coast

Eleven years ago my wife Claudia and I camped near this forest with our son Kevin, and hiked a beautiful trail through the redwoods (nine-year-old Kevin complaining the whole way, especially on the steep climb back). The next morning I returned alone with my camera, found the forest enveloped in dense fog, and made one of my favorite photographs ever.

I had never gone back to that spot. But Kevin now goes to college nearby at Humboldt State University, and while visiting him recently I read a forecast predicting patchy fog, so we decided to return to this forest the next morning. We rose early and drove through fog, then sun, and back into fog. As we neared the trailhead I caught a glimpse of a roadside redwood grove that took my breath away. In the fog it was just so beautiful, so… primeval. I felt I’d traveled back in time a million years.

That feeling persisted as we walked along the trail, underneath 300-foot redwoods disappearing into the mist overhead. It smelled damp and earthy, and the only sounds were the soft, echoing calls of birds.

Claudia and Kevin continued down the trail while I became completely and happily absorbed in photographing redwoods and rhododendrons. I eventually found the spot where I’d made that image eleven years ago, and it looked exactly the same—the same trees, the same fog. But I wasn’t interested in repeating myself, and concentrated on photographing juxtapositions of redwoods and rhododendrons, and on spots where the sun was breaking through the mist. I made many photographs that morning, but this is my favorite because to me it captures the primeval mood of this place.

Click here to purchase one of these prints!

—Michael Frye

Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author and photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, plus the eBook Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom. He has written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California.

5 Comments

Richard Wong on October 25, 2011 at 4:12 pm

I agree about your comments on the “easy to shoot Yosemite” sentiments. It’s easy to take generic images of a stunning landscape because it’s so obvious. People who feel it is easy to shoot Yosemite should strive for more and pursue their own vision. Personally I find Yosemite to be a difficult photo shoot because of how mature the subject matter is. Everywhere you walk in Yosemite, you are reminded of how amazing Ansel Adams’ icons were or some great Yosemite landscape you saw on the internet last week.
Michael Frye on October 25, 2011 at 10:12 pm

Richard, thanks for posting these well-thought-out comments. Indeed the subject matter is very mature – but an imaginative photographer can always find something new. Aside from the issue of dealing with all those photographers who have come before, Yosemite is an incredible place, and it’s hard to show that in a photograph. When I first visited Yosemite Valley I had already seen many photographs of it, but it still took my breath away. The photographs I’d seen – even Ansel’s – didn’t do it justice. I don’t know if any photograph can.
G Dan Mitchell on October 26, 2011 at 7:11 am

Both beautiful, but the light in the redwood photograph is really something very special, Michael.

Dan
Michael Frye on October 26, 2011 at 9:35 pm

Thanks Dan – the experience of being in that forest was really special to me, so I hope that comes through in the photograph.
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