Travels and Stories
by Michael Frye | Mar 18, 2025 | Travels and Stories, Wildlife Photography
Mountains, glaciers, and chinstrap penguins, Antarctica
At the end of our trip to Antarctica for Visionary Wild, I told Claudia that the thing I was going to miss most was seeing penguins every day. It seemed strange to be heading back to a world without penguins, since they had been a daily part of our lives for two weeks.
And penguins are so much fun to watch. While supremely graceful in water, they’re awkward on land. Yet every day many penguins climb and descend from their nests on slopes so steep they would intimidate most humans. They fall all the time, but always seem to bounce back up and keep going. They’re determined and dedicated parents; they have to be to thrive and reproduce in this harsh environment. And they’re feisty. They won’t tolerate other penguins getting too close to their nest, or intruding on their space.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 26, 2025 | Travels and Stories
Sun, tree, snow, and cloud iridescence, Hokkaido, Japan. We were actually headed back to the hotel for breakfast when the sun broke through clouds, creating some beautiful light. My co-leader on this trip, Toshiki Nakanishi, knew just the spot to go to head for, with this lone tree on a snowy hillside. I bracketed five frames, two stops apart, to get detail in the bright clouds as well as the foreground shadows. The blue and gold colors near the sun are cloud iridescence in ice clouds.
After returning from Antarctica, Claudia and I spent a week at home, then flew across the Pacific to lead another trip for Visionary Wild on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island.
Hokkaido is known for its abundant snow in winter, and has become a popular destination for skiers and snowboarders. We saw many, many skis and snowboards on the luggage carousel at the Sapporo airport.
Hokkaido has also become known in the photography world for its minimalist winter landscapes, with trees, fences, and other objects isolated against the white, snowy backdrop. Shinzo Maeda produced some beautifully-simple color work in Hokkaido in the 80s and 90s, and then Michael Kenna brought his singular style of black-and-white photography to the island in the early 2000s (and continues to photograph Hokkaido today).
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by Michael Frye | Feb 6, 2025 | Travels and Stories
Iceberg at sunset, Antarctica. As if putting on a grand finale, we passed a large, beautifully-shaped iceberg just after sunset, with colorful clouds lingering in the sky to the south.
As I said in my last post, I had a wonderful and eye-opening introduction to Antarctica. But the next day, January 18th, would be even better.
By this second morning we were all starting to get used to the rhythms of life on board the ship, and our group had quickly gelled. We had a really great group, and had lots of fun together. And the crew members of the Hans Hansson were all super nice, going out of their way to make us all feel comfortable and give us the best experience possible.
The day began with overcast skies – which gave us a little extra sleep, since there wasn’t a compelling reason to get up for sunrise at 3:00 a.m.! But later in the morning skies started to clear.
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by Michael Frye | Feb 2, 2025 | Travels and Stories
Chinstrap penguin calling, Antarctica. On our first zodiac excursion we encountered these two chinstraps posing for us on an iceberg in a snowstorm.
Claudia and I just returned home from Antarctica. What a wonderful trip! It’s hard to believe that this place actually exists here on earth, because it seems so different than everywhere else on the planet. It’s other-worldly, yet strikingly beautiful.
I made a lot of photos on this trip – over 35,000! Some of that was wildlife photography, which demands capturing many frames to catch the right pose or moment of action. And most of the landscape photos were also hand-held from a moving ship or zodiac, where I had to capture a series of frames to ensure catching the right angle as we passed one compelling scene after another. But the biggest problem was that the place is just so damned beautiful that there were photos everywhere I looked!
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by Michael Frye | Jan 24, 2025 | Travels and Stories
Fog, ice, and mountains, Antarctica
Claudia and I are having a wonderful time in Antarctica. It’s just an amazing, other-worldly place. And we’ve had great conditions, with unusually calm winds, and some beautiful light and weather.
I’m co-leading this trip for Visionary Wild with Chris Linder, who’s a super-nice guy, and a wonderful photographer and teacher. Our crew aboard the Hans Hansson has been great, getting us into lots of beautiful spots that bigger ships can’t get into, and happily making diversions to circle an interesting iceberg, or check out an ice arch, or get us into the right spots to take advantage of the light. And we have a wonderful group of participants, which always makes it more fun. It’s a small group – only nine participants – and we’re all having a great time together.
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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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