In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Sep 11, 2015 | Night Photography
Tufa and Milky Way, Mono Lake, CA, USA
The last few weeks have been very busy. We just finished our Bodie workshop, which was tremendous fun. I’ll post some images from the workshop when I get a chance to process them, but in the meantime here’s a photograph from last Saturday, just before the workshop started.
I wanted to photograph at South Tufa at Mono Lake, but was worried that it would be too crowded, since it was Saturday on Labor Day weekend. And when Claudia and I pulled into the South Tufa parking lot at sunset we were astonished at the number of cars: the entire, large parking lot looked full.
We managed to find a place to park, and headed out to the lake, figuring that since it was getting dark most of the people would leave soon. And indeed, the place emptied out quickly, except for a few photographers intent on night photography. By ten o’clock, when I made this image, there were only three other people around – all photographers of course.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 28, 2015 | Night Photography
Tufa and stars (with Perseus and the Pleiades), Mono Lake. I lit the tufa formations with a flashlight during the 15-second exposure; it only took a brief pass with the light to provide sufficient illumination at 6400 ISO and f/2.8.
As I said in my last post, we had remarkably clear skies during our recent Starry Skies Adventure workshop, despite the proximity of the Walker Fire. But 24 hours before the workshop started the situation was uncertain and changing quickly. We didn’t know what would happen with the fire, and whether we’d see any stars through the smoke. Some workshop participants decided to take a rain check (smoke check?), which was completely understandable under the circumstances. But most people chose to come anyway and take their chances. In the end we had a great time. There were moments, while standing under the stars in the clear, cool, night air, when the fire seemed like a vague, distant memory.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 23, 2015 | Night Photography, Workshops
Helicopter over the Walker Fire from Highway 395, last Sunday evening
Our Starry Skies Adventure workshop turned out to be a little more adventurous than we thought. Just before we left our home in Mariposa last Saturday to head for the workshop I checked the satellite photos online. The Rough Fire near King’s Canyon National Park had been sending smoke north, so I was keeping an eye on it. But my last-minute check revealed a new smoke plume just to the southwest of Mono Lake. Uh oh. Our workshop was based in Lee Vining, on the west shore of Mono Lake, only a few miles from that smoke plume.
I could see the smoke from this new fire on one of the Yosemite webcams. I found that it was called the Walker Fire, and that it had started the night before near Walker Lake, but I couldn’t find any up-to-date information about the fire’s size and location. When Claudia and I left home about 3:00 p.m. the Tioga Road (Highway 120) through the park was still open. But when we got to Tuolumne Meadows we found that the fire had closed the road between the eastern entrance of the park and Highway 395. What do we do now? We decided we had to drive around over Sonora Pass and check out the fire in person. That meant five extra hours of driving, and a long night ahead of us.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 9, 2015 | Night Photography
Lightning over the San Joaquin Valley from the Sierra Nevada foothills, California, USA
This summer I’ve often heard my fellow Californians making comments like, “Weird weather we’re having,” or “Interesting weather, isn’t it?” Yes indeed. Typically most of the state receives no precipitation from May through September, but this summer we’ve had lots of subtropical moisture drifting northward into the state, triggering showers and thunderstorms. The rains have mostly been light and scattered, so haven’t made any real dent in the drought, but have created interesting conditions for photography.
Last Thursday forecasters predicted another subtropical surge approaching, but we didn’t see much sign of it at our house. Then Claudia and I got into our hot tub around 10:30 p.m. (our nightly ritual before going to bed) and immediately noticed distant flashes of lightning. We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from at first; maybe the west? So I got out of the tub to check radar images, and saw that the nearest storms that could possibly be creating lightning were near the coast! That seemed impossibly far, but then last summer at Mono Lake, during our Starry Skies workshop, we saw distant flashes of lightning, and they turned out to be in eastern Nevada, 200 miles away. So yes, it was indeed possible to see flashes from lightning in the coast ranges, only 80 miles from our house.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 2, 2015 | Composition
Sunbeams in a redwood forest, northern California coast, USA
When doing critiques I often encounter otherwise-wonderful images, with simple, strong compositions, great light, and nice color, but lacking an essential ingredient: a focal point. Viewers need something to latch onto, and if they don’t find it right away they feel lost. You have to take them by the hand and say, “Here, look at this.”
The photograph above has an obvious focal point — the sun. From there your eyes can travel along the radiating light beams out to the rest of the frame.
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by Michael Frye | Jul 26, 2015 | Photography Tips
Clouds and Mammoth Peak reflected in an alpine tarn, Yosemite (1/90th of a second)
I love mirror reflections. The symmetry they create, with the bottom of the photograph mimicking the top, almost automatically adds repetition and creates patterns, helping to unify the image and give it rhythm.
The photograph above is a good example. I made this about two weeks ago near Tioga Pass, with some fantastic clouds passing by late in the afternoon. It’s not a perfect mirror, as the water is slightly rippled, but it’s close enough. The clouds and their reflections form a big X through the picture, a pattern that echoes some of the diagonals in the mountains. This design draws your eye from the middle of the frame out to the corners, giving the image a sense of dynamic energy. None of that would happen without the mirror reflections.
On the other hand, I love rippled water too. (more…)
by Michael Frye | Jul 23, 2015 | Workshops, Yosemite Photo Conditions
Sunset clouds reflected in an alpine tarn, Saturday evening. This was a spectacular sunset that seemed to last forever. Believe it or not I actually toned down the pink color – it was pretty intense.
My Hidden Yosemite workshop with The Ansel Adams Gallery ended Sunday evening, and since then I’ve been catching up on work – and sleep! The days are long this time of year, which meant early starts and late evenings during the workshop, but it was all worth it, and we had a wonderful time.
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by Michael Frye | Jul 12, 2015 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Sunset at Tenaya Lake, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
On Wednesday I’ll be starting my 10th Hidden Yosemite workshop. I always enjoy this class because we can do some hiking, get away from the crowds, and go to some of my favorite locations in the high country. It’s such a pleasure to feel the crisp, cool air, and see the intense light. And, of course, the area is wonderfully photogenic.
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by Michael Frye | Jul 6, 2015 | Composition, Light and Weather
Half Dome from Glacier Point, late afternoon, Yosemite; for a brief moment the clouds formed a zigzag pattern above Half Dome.
Last week I mentioned that the weather forecast called for monsoonal moisture to move up into the Sierra Nevada from the south, with possible showers and thunderstorms. And sure enough, things unfolded pretty much as predicted. Rain was very localized; we got sprinkled on a couple of times at our house in Mariposa, but other nearby areas got dumped on when they received a direct hit from a thunderstorm.
Wednesday night brought thunder to the foothills near our house – that’s when I made the lightning photograph from my last post. But we saw interesting clouds all week. Claudia and I made two trips to Glacier Point, and I also photographed some beautiful moonlit clouds from our driveway, and made a trip into the lower foothills, where I found some striking, colorful sunbeams.
What do all these photographs have in common – aside from clouds? Patterns. All of these images have some kind of repeating pattern or design in the clouds.
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by Michael Frye | Jul 3, 2015 | Night Photography, Travels and Stories
Lightning over the Sierra Nevada foothills, Mariposa County, CA, USA
We had some pre-Fourth-of-July fireworks here Wednesday night. At about 11:00 p.m. I let our dog Rider out before going to bed, and noticed flashes in the sky to the south. Sleep could wait! Claudia and I headed to a nearby viewpoint on Triangle Road, and saw lightning in three separate storm cells to the southeast, south, and southwest.
When watching thunderstorms you often only see cloud-to-cloud lightning, but on this night we could see some distinct bolts hitting the ground. I watched closely to try to determine where the most lightning activity was taking place. My first try didn’t work, but then another spot further to the right seemed to become more active, so I pointed my camera there, locked the tripod, and captured a series of 30-second exposures (each at f/9.5, 800 ISO). This photograph is a blend of five separate frames capturing seven or eight lightning bolts.
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