In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Jun 13, 2013 | Digital Darkroom
Lone cloud at sunrise, Mono Lake, CA, USA
There’s been a lot of internet discussion lately about the new Adobe Creative Cloud. If you haven’t heard about this, Adobe decided that it will offer its Creative Suite applications only by subscription. You can get the whole suite (including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc.) for $50 a month, or an individual application for $20 a month. They’re offering first-year discounts for people who own a license to any CS3 or later application.
On the positive side, subscribers will get regular updates to the software when new features are ready, rather than having to wait for a new version to come out. On the other hand, $20 per month for an application represents a substantial price increase. The last Photoshop upgrade was $199. Since the original Photoshop CS came out in 2003, Adobe has upgraded Photoshop, on average, every 20.6 months. If that pace of innovation continued, a $199 upgrade price would average out to around $10 per month – or half as much as they’re asking for a Creative Cloud subscription to a single application.
I might be able to live with the price, but here’s the worst part: if you stop your subscription at any time, you can’t use the software anymore.
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by Michael Frye | Jun 12, 2013 | Digital Darkroom
Sun breaking through fog in a redwood forest
We had a wonderful time up in redwood country. It’s such a beautiful area, and we had great conditions – plus two really nice groups of people, and the relaxing ambience of the Requa Inn to come home to after a long day of photography. It was a memorable and enjoyable two weeks.
I’ll post more images from the area soon, but I’ll start with this one showing sun breaking through the fog in a redwood forest. It can be difficult to work with this kind of splotchy light, but I loved the mood of this scene, and luckily the sun hit just the right spots, creating a nicely-balanced pattern of light and dark.
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by Michael Frye | May 24, 2013 | Vision and Creativity
Redwoods and rhododendron, late afternoon
I’m up along the far northern California coast, scouting for my upcoming redwood workshops. I just love this area, and I’m having fun exploring some new locations, as well as reacquainting myself with old favorites.
We’ve had off-and-on showers, with periods of soft light broken up by sunshine and interesting clouds. On Tuesday afternoon a rain squall passed through, and then skies cleared late in the afternoon – perfect conditions for photographing some of the sea stacks that are so abundant along the coast here. I’ve included three images from that afternoon below.
I found a redwood grove that gets sunlight very late in the afternoon, and watched beautiful amber light streaming through the forest as I walked along the trail. Photographing a forest with patches of sun and shade is a lot like photographing a landscape with dappled light from broken clouds. The light has to highlight the most interesting parts of the scene for it to work, but when that happens the modulated, chiaroscuro lighting can add depth, dimension, and mood to the photograph. I found a couple of compositions where the light hit just the right places: the image of redwoods and rhododendrons at the top, and the one with faint sunbeams below.
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by Michael Frye | May 10, 2013 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Dogwoods and reflections along the Merced River, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
The dogwoods put on an exceptional display in Yosemite Valley this year; it seemed like every tree was bursting with blossoms. Participants in my Spring Digital Camera workshop with The Ansel Adams Gallery last week had lots of opportunities to photograph dogwoods, and I was really impressed with some of the compositions they made.
I found time to make the image above one afternoon last week, with dogwoods juxtaposed against reflections in the Merced River. This is good example of the kind of small-scale lighting event I wrote about recently; late in the day the sun hit trees and bushes along the opposite bank of the river, creating multi-colored reflections in the water behind this group of dogwoods.
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by Michael Frye | Apr 30, 2013 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Storm clouds over Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
Yosemite Valley has been exceptionally pretty lately. Last Wednesday some dramatic clouds rolled in, and it’s been a great year for dogwoods.
The dogwoods in Yosemite are pretty consistent performers. They always bloom, regardless of how wet or dry the previous winter has been. But some years are better than others, and this is one of the better ones I’ve seen recently, as most of the trees have more blossoms than usual. The dogwoods arrived early this year, and all of them are now leafing out, but the flowers were still fresh-looking yesterday. In another week or so they’ll start to look bedraggled in the valley, though they should just be starting to bloom at higher elevations along highways 41 and 120, and in the Tuolumne Grove of giant sequoias.
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by Michael Frye | Apr 22, 2013 | Digital Darkroom
As many of you know, Adobe released Lightroom 5 Beta last week. Now that I’ve had a chance to give it a thorough test drive, here are my thoughts about the new features:
Advanced Healing Brush
The Spot Removal tool has received a major upgrade – finally! You can now brush over an area you want to retouch, instead of being confined to using only discrete spots.
I’ve tried this new feature on several images, and it works pretty well. It makes short work of relatively simple jobs, like getting rid of a jet trail in the sky, that used to require tediously placing a series of cloning or healing spots. Now it usually takes just one brush stroke to make a jet trail disappear.
Photoshop still has easier and more efficient options for difficult retouching jobs. But the new Advanced Healing Brush will make it possible to do more retouching in Lightroom, allowing you to keep a completely flexible, non-destructive workflow. I think that’s a big improvement; I’ll say more about that further down.
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by Michael Frye | Apr 18, 2013 | Yosemite Photo Conditions
Dogwood blossoms and reflections in the Merced River, from May 2012
The dogwoods are just starting to come out in Yosemite Valley. I was up there Tuesday, and saw that perhaps 30 percent of the dogwoods had new, green blossoms. A couple of trees even had fully white – though small – blossoms. Also, the cottonwoods are leafing out with those beautiful new bright-green leaves.
You want to catch the dogwoods early. The flowers last for several weeks, but they start to look ragged after awhile, and they don’t stand out as much after the trees leaf out. With the weather predicted to warm up this weekend I expect the dogwoods will progress rapidly, and many, perhaps even most, will be in full bloom a week from now. Next week or the following weekend might be the best time this year.
Also, there will be a full moon next Thursday, so let the lunar rainbow madness begin! You can visit Don Olson’s web site to see his predictions for when lunar rainbows will be visible from Cook’s Meadow and from the bridge below Lower Yosemite Fall. You can read my tips about photographing lunar rainbows here, and see what it’s like to spend a moonlit evening in Cook’s Meadow with 200 other photographers here.
Spring has arrived!
— Michael Frye
Related Posts: Tips for Photographing Lunar Rainbows; Lunar Rainbow Images, and the Upcoming Annular Eclipse
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 eBooks Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, and Exposure for Outdoor Photography. 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.
by Michael Frye | Apr 16, 2013 | Announcements
El Capitan after an autumn snowstorm from El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
I know many of my readers have a close connection with Yosemite, so I thought you would want to know about some proposed changes to El Capitan Meadow. In most of the proposed alternatives for the park service’s Merced River Draft Management plan, fencing and signs would be installed to keep visitors from trampling the meadow.
John Sexton wrote a thoughtful post on Facebook about this issue, which I recommend reading. El Capitan Meadow has long been a favorite spot for photographers in Yosemite. Ansel Adams made his Oak Tree, Snowstorm photograph from there. Galen Rowell captured one of his most famous images, Clearing Storm Over El Capitan, from this meadow. John posted one of his wonderful photographs on his Facebook post. El Capitan Meadow is certainly a favorite place of mine too, and I’ve made many images there, including all the ones included here.
I know that the park service has a difficult job. They have to balance preservation with public use and enjoyment of the parks. Meadows are fragile, and are easily damaged by too much foot traffic, and the easiest way to prevent that damage is to fence off the meadow.
On the other hand, what makes Yosemite Valley so wonderful, so extraordinary, is the juxtaposition of soaring cliffs with the serenity of the meadows and meandering river on the valley floor. There are other places with magnificent cliffs. There is no other place with an idyllic valley surrounded by such high walls. The quintessential Yosemite experience is to wander out into a meadow, stare up at the cliffs and waterfalls, and soak up the tranquility. I would hate to see that experience taken away. There has to be a better solution than fencing and “Keep Out” signs for the valley’s meadows.
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by Michael Frye | Apr 11, 2013 | Light and Weather, Travels and Stories
Rainbow over Yosemite Valley from near Old Inspiration Point, Yosemite
It was a harebrained idea, but sometimes harebrained ideas work.
On Easter Sunday the forecast called for showers and thunderstorms, with a 100% chance of rain. So I decided it would be a great day to hike 6 miles and climb over 2,000 feet up to Old Inspiration Point.
I could have just gone to Tunnel View. Tunnel View is a wonderfully photogenic spot, where I could have waited out any rain showers in the car, then walked 50 feet to the viewpoint if something interesting happened. And if the light didn’t cooperate, well, no big deal – it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve struck out at Tunnel View, and it wouldn’t take much effort to come back and try again.
On the other hand, I have lots of photographs from Tunnel View, and every other easily-accessible viewpoint in Yosemite Valley, but I’d never been to Old Inspiration Point. And I was in the mood for an adventure. I asked Claudia if she wanted to come with me (carefully explaining what she might be in for, I swear), and she said sure. She’s always up for a hike.
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by Michael Frye | Apr 9, 2013 | Reviews
Some interesting books have been released recently that I think my readers might be interested in:
Visual Flow: Mastering the Art of Composition
by Ian Plant, with George Stocking
287 pages
24.95
Visual Flow: Mastering the Art of Composition is an ambitious eBook that delves deeply into what could be the most important aspect of photography: composition. But composition is a difficult subject to talk about, and teach, because of its complexity. Every situation a photographer encounters is different, and no rules or formulas can encompass all the variables.
Ian puts this well: “The ‘rules’ do not dictate whether a composition is good or not; rather, a composition either works or it doesn’t, and the ‘rules’ are merely an attempt (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight) to assess common features of successful compositions. This is vitally important to remember: the ‘rules’ flow from successful compositions, not the other way around.”
I couldn’t agree more, and Ian and I are in complete agreement about this too: “Learning to think abstractly about visual elements is the single most important thing you can do to improve your compositional skills.” The less you think about the subject, and the more you think about the underlying abstract design – the lines, shapes, and patterns – the better you compositions will be.
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