Light and Weather
by Michael Frye | Dec 22, 2024 | Light and Weather
Fog and sunbeams, Sierra Nevada foothills, California. I made this image Wednesday morning, after the sun rose high enough to rake across these layers of fog and trees. In color it was all one note, with everything a pale gold color. Since it was monochromatic anyway, I tried it in black and white, and liked that much better. I think the color distracted from the main story of the photograph, which is about the layers, patterns of light and dark, and tree shadows. 321mm, 1/200 sec. at f/11, ISO 100.
California’s Central Valley is often filled with fog in winter. Usually a shallow layer of fog forms during the night, then burns off the next morning as the sun warms the air. There’s a temporary, low-level inversion during the night and early morning, where the air near the ground is cooler than the air higher up, but when the sun penetrates the fog and warms the ground the inversion ends.
Sometimes, however, the fog in the Central Valley is so thick it doesn’t burn off. The weak sunlight on short winter days never penetrates the fog layer completely, so the fog lasts all day, and into the next night. If the fog persists for a couple of days the inversion will grow deeper (it can get up to two- or three-thousand feet deep), and the fog will gradually lift off the ground into a low overcast, or stratus deck. And then that higher-altitude fog layer will push up into the Sierra foothills. A stratus deck like this can last for several days, or even a week, until a disturbance in the atmosphere (like a storm, or even a weak, dry front) mixes the air and ends the inversion.
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by Michael Frye | Dec 1, 2024 | Light and Weather
Sunlight breaking through clouds and fog, Oregon Coast. During our workshop we waited out a brief-but-heavy rain shower by sheltering underneath a dense tree canopy. After we emerged clouds blocked the sun for awhile, but eventually sunlight broke through and backlit the wave-generated mist for a few beautiful minutes. 28mm, 3 seconds at f/11, ISO 100, ND filter.
Sometimes I’m out with my camera on a clear, sunny day, and a passerby says, “What a beautiful day for photography!” I just smile and agree; there’s no point in discussing the finer points of landscape photography with a passing stranger.
And of course you can make good photographs on clear, sunny days. Those conditions are perfect for many subjects and scenes. But landscapes are usually more interesting and photogenic with clouds, fog, mist, snow, or rain – and the light that weather helps create, like sunbeams, rainbows, dappled light, colorful sunsets, and so on.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 24, 2024 | Light and Weather
Breaking wave, Oregon Coast (from last Wednesday morning). This is one of the largest wave splashes I’ve ever seen. Note the gulls in front of the wave (you can click on this to see it larger). 192mm, 1/500 sec. at f/16, ISO 640.
After our Oregon Coast workshop Claudia and I hung around for a few more days, since we love this area, and the weather models were showing that more big waves were possible.
And I’m glad we stayed, as we did see some large waves last Monday, and then even bigger ones on Wednesday, after the “bomb cyclone” brought winds and heavy rain to the area on Tuesday and Tuesday night.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 17, 2024 | Light and Weather, Travels and Stories
Crashing wave on a foggy morning, Oregon Coast
We just finished another edition of our Oregon Coast workshop, and once again had a great time. We had a really nice group of people, which always makes it more fun for everyone. And we encountered some wonderfully stormy weather.
The forecasts for the workshop showed a series of storms, and rain every day. But that didn’t mean nonstop rain. I knew there would be breaks, and those breaks could generate some interesting light.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 7, 2024 | Light and Weather, Travels and Stories
Fog and Negit Island, sunrise, Mono Lake, California
On our way home from Montana last month, Claudia and I stopped for the night in Lee Vining (near Mono Lake, just east of Yosemite). We met our friends Charlotte and Gary Gibb there, and had dinner with them at the Whoa Nellie Deli.
It was raining – the first significant weather we’d encountered on our whole trip. Then, just before sunset, the rain stopped, and we saw signs of clearing, so we rushed out to the shore of Mono Lake to catch the sunset. While we didn’t see the sun breaking through, we caught a nice sunset glow over the lake:
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by Michael Frye | Oct 13, 2024 | Composition, Light and Weather
Misty sunrise from Tunnel View, Yosemite NP, California. Where does your eye go in this photograph? Here the brightest areas are in the middle of the image, while the edges are darker, helping to draw the eye into the picture, rather than out of the frame.
We launched our first online workshop about composition about 18 months ago, and then more recently added additional online workshops focused on light. I picked these topics because I think they are, hands down, the two most important aspects of photography.
In photography, nothing is more fundamental than light. When we press the shutter, we record the light falling on the film or sensor at that moment. Light is literally the medium we’re working with, and the quality of the light has everything to do with the mood and message of the photograph.
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