@michaelfrye

@michaelfrye

I’m a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature, and the author/photographer of five books, including Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters; The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite; and two Landscapes in Lightroom online courses, The Essential Step-by-Step Guide and Advanced Techniques. Follow my weekly blog posts where I share my field experiences as well as helpful photography tips.

Meteor and Milky Way On Thursday evening Claudia and I decided to head up to Yosemite to watch the Perseid meteor shower. I set up my camera and took a continuous series of photos, hoping to catch a meteor in a good position - with no luck at all until my second-to-last frame of the night. In fact I didn't even realize I'd captured this meteor until I got home! Here's the full story: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/08/15/meteor-and-milky-way/

Natural Landscape Photography Awards If you haven’t heard yet, there’s a new photography competition called the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. It is, in their words, a competition “celebrating the artistic achievements of landscape photographers who dedicate themselves to capturing the beauty of the landscape in a realistic manner.” Categories include Grand Landscape, Intimate and Abstract, Nightscape, Aerial, and Project. There’s also a special Youth category, with free entries, for people 17 and younger. They’ll be handing out $11,000 in total prize money to the winners, plus a Canon EOS R5 and other gear. If you’d like to enter, you can use the code FRYE15 to get 15% off the contest entry fees. (I won’t be getting any commission for this.) The deadline for entries is September 1st. Here’s a link to their website: https://naturallandscapeawards.com I made this photograph a couple of years ago at Tunnel View in Yosemite. I've always liked it, though I haven't posted it much. And yes, it fits the rules of this contest! It's a blend of four different exposures to get detail in both highlights and shadows in this very high-contrast scene, but that's allowed. If I had replaced the sky, or stretched the mountains, that wouldn't be allowed. I think the rules for this contest are well thought out, and a good place to start thinking about your own personal boundaries for image manipulation: https://naturallandscapeawards.com/rules/

Evenings at Mono Lake If you’re used to lakes in other parts of the world, Mono Lake might seem like a strange place. The lakeshore can feel austere and inhospitable in the middle of the day, when most people visit – especially on a hot summer afternoon. But photographers are crepuscular creatures, most active around sunrise and sunset. So we are, perhaps, more likely to appreciate the unusual charms of a place like Mono Lake. Early and late in the day the temperatures are cooler, the light is warm and inviting, and the lake’s thousands of birds come alive. Claudia and I have experienced some wonderful, serene evenings along the shores of Mono Lake this summer. Here's one photograph I made as the sun broke through clouds late in the afternoon. You can find more images on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/08/01/evenings-at-the-lake/

Summer in the Yosemite High Country If I were to make a list of my favorite places on earth, the Yosemite high country would have to be near the top. There’s something about the thin, pine-scented air, intense light, vast expanses of polished granite, and lakes sparkling in the sun… I’ve spent a lot of time in this area over the last 40 years. I feel like this land is part of me, and me part of it. Some spots are as familiar to me as Yosemite Valley, and yet I’m still finding new places to explore. This year Tioga Pass opened while Claudia and I were up in the redwoods, so we didn’t get to visit the high country while snow and ice still lingered on the peaks and lakes. But since we returned from the redwoods we’ve made several day trips up there, and also managed a couple of extended stays on the east side in Lee Vining, allowing us to get a good dose of that clean, thin mountain air. And the high country has had some spells of clouds, showers, and thunderstorms to add interest to the sky and motivate me to get out there. Here's one of my high-country photos from a couple of weeks ago, with some dramatic light just before sunset. You see find a few more recent images on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/07/15/summer-in-the-high-country/

Join Me at the Out of Death Valley Conference! I’m thrilled to be joining the Out of Chicago team for another photography conference. This will be an in-person event – in Death Valley no less! – taking place next January 26-30, 2022. The dunes and sculptured badlands of Death Valley are amazing, surreal, and beautiful locations for landscape photography. And I’ll be joining a wonderful cast of instructors, including Nick Page, David Kingham, Alex Noriega, Erin Babnik, Jennifer Renwick, John Barklay, Michael Gordon, Sarah Marino, Joshua Cripps, William Neill, Cole Thompson, Colleen Miniuk, TJ Thorne, and Eric Paré. The format for this event will be similar to the Out of Yosemite conference I did early last year, with morning and evening small-group field sessions, midday and evening presentations, breakout sessions, processing tutorials, and portfolio reviews. All the presentations I attended in Yosemite were wonderful, but that was just part of it. The camaraderie was great, and I really enjoyed just hanging out with all the participants and fellow instructors and talking about photography. I’m sure Out of Death Valley will be the same – intense, educational, and lots of fun. If you’d like to join us in Death Valley next January, for a limited time you can get $250 off by using the code FRYEDV22 when you register for the conference. This code expires in one week, on Monday, July 19th, so don’t wait to use it! You can register for the conference or find more information here: https://www.outofchicago.com/conference/death-valley-2022/ I hope to see some of you in Death Valley next January!

Mono Lake Mono Lake is a unique and beautiful place. It’s known for its tufa formations, but there’s so much more to it. It’s a giant pool surrounded by desert sage, and bounded by the peaks of the Sierra Nevada to the west. In summer, monsoonal moisture often arrives from the southeast and runs into that mountain wall, where the moisture gets pushed upward, forming clouds, showers, and thunderstorms. The lake becomes a vector for these storms. I made this photograph a couple of weeks ago. This rain cloud lingered for awhile in the same location, allowing me to capture variations of this scene as the sun lowered, and the wind altered the reflections. You can see more of my recent photos from Mono Lake on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/07/03/mono-lake/

Podcast Interview with David Johnston I recently did an interview with David Johnston for his podcast The Landscape Photography Show, and it just got released today. David asked a lot of great questions, and I thought it was a fun and interesting conversation. We talked about my photographic journey, photographing the same place over and over, whether originality is overvalued, internal and external motivations for your work, and much more. You can listen to the episode on David’s website, or through all the usual podcast sources like iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and so on. https://www.davidjohnstonart.com/podcast/michael-frye

The Wild Coast of Northern California As much as I love the redwood forests, the rugged, rocky coastline of northern California is just as beautiful, and just as essential to the character of this region. You can go from the windy, noisy, wide-open expanses of the coast to the calm, quiet, dense forests in minutes, and the transition is breathtaking. Along many trails through the redwoods you can hear the surf in the distance – while watching the fog roll in off the ocean and into the woods. To me, it’s the close proximity and interaction between the ocean and forests that creates the wonderful, wild mood of this place. I had a lot of fun photographing this beautiful coastline during our recent trip to the area. On this day I found some unusual low fog, which I used to create a soft-on-soft look, with a six-second shutter speed smoothing out the waves, and the fog obscuring the background. You can see more of my recent photos from this area on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/06/19/wild-coast/

Return to the Redwoods Until last year, Claudia and I had visited the redwood forests of northern California nine years in a row. The pandemic interrupted that streak, but in late May this year we were able to return once again, and spent almost two weeks in the area. It was great to be back, as I love this part of the world. And while the rhododendrons were late, I’ll take fog and no rhododendrons over rhododendrons and no fog any day. And we had lots of fog, plus several occasions where we got to photograph sunlight breaking through the fog. Soft sunlight filtering through the fog added a beautiful and unusual mood to this scene, and I loved the juxtaposition of young and old trees. You can see more photos from our trip to the redwoods on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/06/13/return-to-the-redwoods/

My New Article in Elements Magazine Elements magazine is a new digital publication devoted to landscape photography, produced by the team behind Medium Format magazine. They’ve only published a few issues of Elements so far, but the quality of the photographs, text, and design has been top notch. Contributors include William Neill, Erin Babnik, Christopher Burkett, Chuck Kimmerle, Hans Strand, Rachael Talibart, Bruce Barnbaum, and many others. And I’m honored to have my work included in the latest issue of this beautiful magazine. My article in the June edition of Elements is called Capturing a Mood. That topic is fundamental to how I approach photographing landscapes, and this article is the most comprehensive piece I’ve yet written about this subject. I hope you’ll consider supporting this new, ambitious publication by subscribing. I don’t receive any commission from them, or anything like that; I just think it’s good to have a magazine like this around in the landscape-photography world. And if you use the code MICHAEL10 you can get 10% off. Here's a link to the magzine: https://www.elementsphotomag.com If you do subscribe, let me know what you think about the magazine, and the article!

Planning for the Lunar Eclipse With TPE 3D In case you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a total lunar eclipse this week in some parts of the world. That includes western North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and eastern Asia. If you want to photograph the eclipse, you first have to figure out where and when it will be visible. You might also want to find an interesting foreground. In my latest blog post I explain how to figure out the moon's position in relation to the landscape using The Photographer's Ephemeris 3D: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/05/23/planning-for-the-lunar-eclipse-with-tpe-3d/ And I also link to another post that describes, in detail, how to photograph a lunar eclipse. I photographed this lunar eclipse sequence in 2011 in the Sierra Nevada foothills. In this photo the moon was setting to the west-northwest just before sunrise. In the upcoming eclipse, the moon will also be setting just before sunrise for viewers in the western U.S. – but to the southwest.

Spring Storm at Glacier Point It’s fun getting wet. Seriously – ask any kid. And for photographers, sometimes you need to stand in the rain, or the spray of a waterfall, to see some dramatic light – including rainbows. Last Sunday Claudia and I went to Glacier Point. After waiting out a heavy shower, the sun started to break through, and a faint rainbow appeared. The rainbow grew stronger, and lasted about 20 minutes overall, but my favorite photos were the early ones, just after the rainbow first appeared - like this one. They seemed to have the most interesting light and mood. But I made many other photographs that afternoon, and you can see more on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/05/18/storm-at-glacier-point/

Dogwoods in Yosemite Valley When a special event occurs in Yosemite, Claudia and I always try to enjoy it. This was a good year for dogwoods, and that profuse bloom definitely qualified as that kind of special event to us, so we've made several trips to Yosemite Valley to see and photograph the dogwoods this spring. Here's one of my favorite images from these trips. I liked the design of the branches, and the gold reflections in the background, but I was especially drawn to pattern of blossoms across the frame, each with its spot of yellow in the middle. You'll find more dogwood photographs from this spring on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/05/09/dogwoods-yosemite-valley/

A Yosemite Icon Last Sunday, for the first time in over a month, we got some significant rain. Well somewhat significant anyway – half an inch. It looked like the storm would clear around sunrise on Monday morning, which could be good timing. So I headed up to Yosemite early, and I ended up at Tunnel View, where I ran into @williamneill and @joshuacrippsphotography (among others). And what a beautiful morning it was! Here's one of my images. You can see a few more photos I made that day on my blog here... https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/05/01/a-yosemite-icon/ ... and you should also check out Bill and Josh's feeds to see some of their images. Of course I’ve photographed misty scenes at Tunnel View many times before. So why would I go back to that view again - especially since so many other people have photographed it as well? That's a good question, and you'll find some of my thoughts about that in the same blog post.

Spring in the Sierra Foothills We didn’t get any storms here in the Sierra between mid March and late April, and therefore no chance to photograph interesting weather. So what else could I photograph? What was happening that might provide opportunities to make a compelling photograph? Well it’s spring, so… flowers? That would seem logical. By California standards, it hasn’t been the greatest year for wildflowers. Yet Claudia and I managed to find some beautiful patches of flowers here in the Sierra foothills. Here's one photograph I made in March of poppies and foothill pines, and you can find more wildflower images on my blog: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/04/28/spring/

Overlooked Images In preparing my recent presentation for the Out of Chicago Live conference, I was digging through my archives for examples to use, and found some interesting images I had overlooked. In some cases I had put them aside, too busy to process them at the time, and then just forgot about them. In other cases I think my perceptions had changed. And sometimes I could see the potential to process an image differently, using new tools and new skills. Here's one of the photographs I unearthed, made on a very foggy morning in Colorado some years ago. You can see more in my latest blog post: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/04/18/overlooked-images/

Trees in Snow The most recent snowstorm in Yosemite led to some beautiful light and clouds – especially late in the day. (See the last photo I posted here.) But when I arrived in the valley that morning it was still snowing. So I did what I always do: I asked myself, “What’s happening now?” In other words, what was interesting or unusual about that moment? What was unique and special in this place I’ve photographed so many times before? The obvious answer was the snow. Not just snow on the ground, or in the trees, but snow still falling from the sky. I knew from past experience that falling snow could give images a soft, fog-like appearance, which often works well with trees. So I headed for one of my favorite oaks. I tried a variety of compositions and shutter speeds, but ended up liking this view, with a 1/15 sec. shutter speed, best. You'll find more images of snowy trees from that day in my latest blog post: https://www.michaelfrye.com/2021/03/27/trees-in-snow/