In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
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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by Michael Frye | Nov 22, 2023 | Announcements
Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I know most people around the world don’t celebrate this holiday, or do so in a different form, or on a different day.
But regardless of whether you honor the traditions of this particular day, I think there’s value in gratitude – to giving thanks for all the things we have to be grateful for. We really should do that every day, but it’s good to have that reminder once a year.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 16, 2023 | Advanced Techniques, Vision and Creativity
Misty sunset on the Oregon Coast. 73mm, 8 seconds at f/16, ISO 100, ND filter.
Claudia and I have been spending a lot of time in the Pacific Northwest this year, which is great, as I love this part of the world. We just finished a workshop along the Oregon Coast, and now we’re making our way to Bellingham, Washington, to visit our son and daughter-in-law, and stopping to see friends along the way.
The workshop was a lot of fun. A great group of people, and we saw some beautiful light, as well as big waves crashing against the shore.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 5, 2023 | Travels and Stories
Barred owl, Olympic NP, Washington
My previous two posts focused on autumn color on the Olympic Peninsula, but it’s a diverse and beautiful area, and I made many photographs that didn’t involve fall color. The forests are quite photogenic even without fall leaves, plus some of my favorite images from the trip were made along the coast. And one of the highlights of our trip was photographing a barred owl.
We found this owl while driving along a back road early one morning. The owl took off from a log next to the road and flew into a nearby tree. I didn’t have my camera out, so we backed up to where the owl couldn’t see us. Then I stepped out of the car, grabbed my camera and 100-400mm lens, climbed into the passenger seat (the owl was on the right), and got everything set.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 2, 2023 | Travels and Stories
Vine maple and alders, autumn, Olympic NP, Washington
My previous post featured mostly images that combined fall color with the moss- and lichen-draped branches that Olympic National Park is known for. I like those juxtapositions, as they’re so characteristic of that area. But we found lots of other interesting juxtapositions as well.
One thing I kept looking for was groves of alders. Alders often form great patterns, with leaning, criss-crossing, light-colored trunks spotted with patches of moss or lichen. But while alders are deciduous trees, their leaves don’t turn color in the fall. Alders just drop their leaves while they’re still green. Even without that color, however, their patterns and structure make them worth photographing, and sometimes (like in the photo above) I was able to juxtapose maples with alder trunks. (Why don’t alder leaves turn color? No one really knows, but here’s one possible explanation.)
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by Michael Frye | Oct 29, 2023 | Composition, Travels and Stories
Vine maples and big-leaf maples, autumn, Olympic NP, Washington
Earlier this month, Claudia and I spent about two weeks on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Part of that time I was co-leading a workshop for Visionary Wild with Jerry Dodrill, which was super fun. We had a great, lively group of people, and beautiful conditions, with lots of fall color, and a gorgeous sunset on the beach.
This was our second trip to the Olympic Peninsula this year, and we loved both visits. There’s something about temperate rain forests that seems to strike a chord with me, whether on the Olympic Peninsula, in the redwoods, or on the west coast of New Zealand.
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by Michael Frye | Oct 19, 2023 | Digital Darkroom
Aspens and bigtooth maples, northern Utah. I used the new Point Color tool to tweak the originally dull-looking greens and yellows in this photo and make them more vibrant.
Last week Adobe launched major updates to Lightroom Classic (13.0), Lightroom Desktop (7.0), and Lightroom Mobile (9.0). The biggest new features are HDR editing, Point Color, and Lens Blur.
All of these new tools deserve their own post, but we just finished a workshop, and we’re still traveling, so for now I’m just going to explain a few of the salient features, and steer you to some more in-depth information.
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