In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Jan 10, 2024 | Announcements
I’m happy to be joining the National Parks at Night team for the fourth annual Night Photo Summit next month!
This will be my fourth time presenting at the Night Photo Summit, and the previous three have been really fun, so I’m excited to be invited back! This online conference is devoted exclusively to night photography, and I’ll be joining over 30 other distinguished instructors, including Josh Cripps, Sean Bagshaw, Jess Santos, Chris Smith, Jessica Rojas, Royce Bair, Melissa Kaelin, Lance Keimig, Tim Cooper, Chris Nicholson, Gabriel Biderman, and many more.
I’ll be presenting The Magic of Moonlight. I think moonlight offers tremendous possibilities for night photographers – but those possibilities are often overlooked.
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by Michael Frye | Jan 9, 2024 | Light and Weather
Misty sunset from Tunnel View, Yosemite NP, California
Last Tuesday night a small snowstorm moved through Yosemite. It’s been a dry winter so far, and this was the first significant snow in Yosemite Valley in quite awhile. It also looked like the storm might clear around sunrise, which was good timing.
So Claudia and I rose early Wednesday morning and drove up to the Valley, where we found about four inches of new snow. It was great to see the trees decked out in white, and to feel the snow underfoot.
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by Michael Frye | Jan 8, 2024 | Announcements
Aspen kaleidoscope, Uncompahgre NF, Colordao
Color can be one of the trickiest aspects of image processing. How do you get the right white balance? How can you dial in enough saturation to make the image appear lively and vibrant, without it looking fake or garish? How do you get the right hues? How can you apply color grading effectively?
In this live webinar I’ll demonstrate how to tackle this challenge as I take you step-by-step through processing one or more photographs, with an emphasis on handling color. I’ll cover all the basics, but also delve into the nuances that can give your images a rich, sophisticated look, including:
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by Michael Frye | Jan 5, 2024 | Announcements
The votes are all in and counted, and here are my top photographs of 2023!
We had a great response this year: 478 people looked through my initial selection of 45 images and voted for their favorites. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to look through these photographs and voice your opinions! I also really appreciate the kind words so many people posted in the comments or sent by email. I wish I could respond to everyone, but please know that I’ve read them all and am very grateful for all your support.
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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!
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by Michael Frye | Dec 24, 2023 | Announcements
Half Dome, Glacier Point, and the Merced River at night, Yosemite NP, California
To all of you who celebrate the day, Claudia and I wish you a very Merry Christmas! We hope you have a wonderful holiday, full of peace, joy, and the love of family and friends.
I made this photograph on a magical, misty, snowy December night in Yosemite two years ago. I loved the pattern of clouds, with Orion poking through. It was such a beautiful night – but cold! I hope you’re someplace warmer tonight.
— Michael Frye
by Michael Frye | Dec 20, 2023 | Composition, Light and Weather
Redwood, maple, firs, and sunbeams, northern California
We had a long, lingering autumn here on the west coast – especially in the Pacific Northwest. On our way up to Oregon in early November, Claudia and I stopped in some redwood groves to check on the fall color. And we found lots of it. It seemed like a good year for color throughout the Northwest, including the far northern corner of California where the biggest redwoods grow. Underneath the redwood canopy, vine maples and big-leaf maples – the same species found on the Olympic Peninsula, and throughout much of Oregon and Washington – can add splashes of color to the forest.
I had long wanted to photograph fall color in the redwoods, but it’s difficult to find the right conditions, especially since the best groves are a nine-hour drive from home. Some years the big-leaf maples just turn brown. And even if they do turn yellow the timing is highly variable. So we felt very lucky to find some good color this year.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 6, 2023 | Announcements
Tomorrow, December 7th, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, I’ll be one of the presenters in a free webinar hosted by the Out of Chicago team called Frames of Reflection: Unveiling Stories of 2023. I’ll be joining several other instructors for this event, including Kristin Ryan, Nick Page, Charlotte Gibb, and David Akoubian, and we’ll each be sharing a story about a photograph from the past year. Click here to register.
And if you can’t attend live, the webinar will be recorded and posted on the Out of Chicago blog.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 1, 2023 | Announcements
I’m excited to be joining the Out of Chicago team for another photo conference – this time in the Tetons! This is such an amazing and beautiful area, and I’m looking forward to going back. I’m also looking forward to teaching alongside a wonderful group of co-instructors – people like Jennifer Renwick, Nick Page, Charlotte Gibb, David Kingham, Eric Bennett, Chrissy Donadi, Joseph Rossbach, and many more.
We’ll be staying right inside the park at the Jackson Lake Lodge, with great views of the Tetons right from the grounds, plus a good chance of seeing moose in the willow flats below the lodge. And it’ll be a short drive from there to most of the best locations in the Tetons.
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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.
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