I’m posting today on behalf of my wife, Claudia Welsh, who has something exciting to tell you about.

As some of you may already know, Claudia joined five fellow photography friends (Anna Morgan, Charlotte Gibb, Jennifer Renwick, Michele Sons, and Sarah Marino) to form a collaborative group called Circle of Light. They’ve been working on something special: an ebook called The Nature of Place: Personal Narratives in Landscape Photography.

The Nature of Place is meant to be something deeper, and worth sitting with: six photographers writing honestly about what it means to truly connect with the landscapes they love. Each lead essay flows into a candid dialogue between all six voices, exploring ideas like identity, authenticity, belonging, curiosity, and what it means to really see a place rather than just photograph it.

It’s clear that all six photographers put a lot of time, effort, and care into this ebook. And the focus goes beyond the typical recipes for making successful photographs. Instead, this ebook invites you to slow down, reflect, and find your own answers. If you’ve ever wanted to bring more of yourself to your photography — more intention, more meaning, more connection — this conversation was made for you.

The official public launch is on Earth Day, April 22nd. But my blog readers are invited to the pre-launch starting today. Use the code SIXVOICES at checkout to get your copy for just $25. That’s $14 off the retail price of $39. This pre-launch price is available through April 21st.

You can find out more and get your copy here:

The Nature of Place: Personal Narratives in Landscape Photography
296-page ebook with more than 300 photographs
Normally $39, but use the code SIXVOICES to get the pre-launch discount price of only $25.

And don’t miss the celebration! On Sunday, April 26th, all six photographers will gather for a day-long Ask Me Anything event. Leave your questions, follow along, and join the conversation.

The Nature of Place Launch Event
April 26th

Claudia and I hope you’ll grab a copy and join the conversation!

And lastly, I hope you enjoy this time-lapse Claudia created of Yosemite Valley last Friday on that rainy spring afternoon. There’s something quietly magical about the valley during a thunderstorm, and Claudia captured it beautifully.

The post The Nature of Place eBook Pre-Launch appeared first on Michael Frye Photography.

Stormy afternoon at Tunnel View, Yosemite NP, California

The weather is upside down here in central California. Our wettest season, winter, was exceptionally dry. But now that spring has arrived the storms have returned. We’ll take it – we need the rain, and, as the saying goes, it’s better late than never.

And just to make things more interesting, over the last few days unstable air has triggered numerous thunderstorms, with lots of lightning and thunder. That’s quite unusual for this part of the world.

Thunderstorms can create wonderfully photogenic atmospheric conditions, and I’ve been alert for any opportunities that might arise. On Friday afternoon radar images showed a broad line of thunderstorms approaching Yosemite, so Claudia and I made a spur-of-the-moment trip up to Yosemite Valley.

I was hoping to see dappled light, or maybe even a rainbow as the sun popped out between showers. Instead, one thunderstorm followed another, with only slight breaks in between. At one point, while we were waiting out a rain shower in our vehicle at Tunnel View, spots of sunlight started to hit the valley, and I saw a faint rainbow starting to form, so I grabbed my camera and rushed out. But the light faded almost immediately.

Landscape photography often requires letting go of expectations, and adapting to the conditions in front of you. Even without sunlight, the rain created wonderfully moody, misty scenes in Yosemite Valley. So I pivoted, visualizing how these scenes would look in black and white, and concentrating on capturing moments when the mist and clouds were particularly interesting – and moody.

The challenge was keeping ourselves and our cameras dry. We waited out the worst of the deluges in our vehicle, venturing out when the rain let up a bit. I kept my camera covered with a plastic rain sleeve, and used a lens hood to help keep raindrops off the front of the lens.

Luckily the wind was at our backs, so that helped. I don’t mind photographing in the rain as long as the wind isn’t blowing water onto the front of my lens. And even if the wind is in my face I can just keep wiping the lens clear. That’s annoying, but worth the trouble for special situations. I’ve photographed in the rain many times, and made some of my favorite images that way.

So while we didn’t get the light we were hoping for on Friday, Claudia and I had a lot of fun photographing the mist and clouds. It’s always a treat to see Yosemite Valley in stormy weather.

— Michael Frye

P.S. Circle of Light Update

A project that Claudia and the Circle of Light group have been quietly working on for a long time is almost ready to share with the world.

The Nature of Place: Personal Narratives in Landscape Photography is a new collaborative ebook from Circle of Light — six women photographers (Anna Morgan, Charlotte Gibb, Jennifer Renwick, Michele Sons, Sarah Marino, and my wife, Claudia Welsh) who came together around a shared belief that landscape photography can be something more personal, more meaningful than what we typically see. The ebook launches officially on Earth Day, April 22nd. But they’re offering a special pre-launch price for readers of this blog.

Starting tomorrow, you can get your copy for just $25 – that’s $14 off the regular price of $39. I’ll send out another post tomorrow with the discount code, so look for that! This pre-launch price is available through April 21st only. On launch day, the price moves to $29.

If you’ve ever felt a deep pull toward a particular place — if you’ve wondered how to bring more of yourself into your photography — this book was written for you.

More photographs from Friday afternoon:

Trees, mist, and Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite NP, California

Cathedral Rocks and Bridalveil Fall through rain and mist, Yosemite NP, California

Related Posts: Coming Home to Yosemite; Monsoon Season in Yosemite

Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He lives near Yosemite National Park in California, but travels extensively to photograph natural landscapes in the American West and throughout the world.

Michael uses light, weather, and design to make photographs that capture the mood of the landscape, and convey the beauty, power, and mystery of nature. His work has received numerous awards, including the North American Nature Photography Association’s 2023 award for Fine Art in Nature Photography. Michael’s photographs have appeared in publications around the world, and he’s the author and/or principal photographer of several books, including Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, and The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite.

Michael loves to share his knowledge of photography through articles, books, workshops, online courses, and his blog. He’s taught over 200 workshops focused on landscape photography, night photography, digital image processing, and printing.

The post A Stormy Afternoon appeared first on Michael Frye Photography.

Half Dome and the Merced River at sunrise, Yosemite NP, California

Claudia and I have been home for a couple of weeks, which is a nice break from our travels. I love all the trips we’ve been able to go on, but it feels good to chill out a bit at our own house, and sleep in our own bed.

And we don’t have to travel far from home to be in an exotic location, since we live only an hour away from Yosemite Valley.

Whenever we’re home I keep an eye on the weather to see if there might be any interesting or unusual conditions in the park. But it’s been a weird winter. We’ve had a few short spells of wet weather, with multiple storms and copious amounts of precipitation. During one of those stretches in February over two feet of snow accumulated on the floor of Yosemite Valley, which is highly unusual.

But in between those occasional wet periods it’s been completely dry and warm for weeks on end. The overall precipitation this winter is well below average, the snow has already melted except at the highest elevations, and spring is arriving early everywhere.

We did get a couple of small rainstorms last week, and Claudia and I went up to the park two mornings in a row to try and catch the clearing storms. I also made it up to Yosemite Valley one morning in February during that big snow event.

I thought it might be nice to post some images made close to home for a change, so here are a few photos from those trips to the park, along with a couple of time-lapse videos from Claudia and me.

Not a bad place to come home to.

— Michael Frye

Misty morning from Tunnel View, Yosemite NP, California

Mist surrounding Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite NP, California

Clouds and mist wrapping around El Capitan, Yosemite NP, California

Related Posts: The Power of Masking; Monsoon Season in Yosemite

Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He lives near Yosemite National Park in California, but travels extensively to photograph natural landscapes in the American West and throughout the world.

Michael uses light, weather, and design to make photographs that capture the mood of the landscape, and convey the beauty, power, and mystery of nature. His work has received numerous awards, including the North American Nature Photography Association’s 2023 award for Fine Art in Nature Photography. Michael’s photographs have appeared in publications around the world, and he’s the author and/or principal photographer of several books, including Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, and The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite.

Michael loves to share his knowledge of photography through articles, books, workshops, online courses, and his blog. He’s taught over 200 workshops focused on landscape photography, night photography, digital image processing, and printing.

The post Coming Home to Yosemite appeared first on Michael Frye Photography.

Snow-capped spires, Antarctica. 158mm, 1/500 sec. at f/11, ISO 500.

It’s taken me a long time to go through all my photos from our January trip to Antarctica – all 41,000 of them! I previously posted images of natural ice sculptures, and penguins. But this time I thought I’d focus on wider landscapes, and the beautiful Antarctic light.

Antarctic light is special. When we arrived in early January the sun rose at 2:45 a.m., and at an azimuth of about 160 degrees. That’s just a tad to the east of due south (180 degrees). Then the sun carved a low path through the sky to the east, north, and west, finally setting (at midnight) just a little bit west of where it rose, at an azimuth of about 200 degrees. It never got truly dark.

But the best part was that sunrises and sunsets were long, lingering affairs. Beautiful golden light lasted hours.

Of course skies could be overcast, which would snuff out that golden light. It could rain or snow. Last year we were actually enveloped in fog for a day and a half (which I loved). Sometimes – rarely – we had a completely sunny day or two.

But often we’d get a mix of sun and clouds. We frequently saw clear skies over land, where glaciers and icecaps created cool downdrafts that inhibited cloud formation, while the waterways were covered with clouds. (We observed the same thing in Greenland last September.)

This mix of sun and clouds was often quite beautiful, with dappled, chiaroscuro light, sunbeams, or dramatic clouds. But sometimes the most interesting light was in the distance, at places where land and water met. So my 100-400mm lens got a workout focusing on that light against distant slices of mountains and clouds.

Most of these photos were handheld, of course, either from our ship (the Hans Hansson) or a zodiac. Handholding with a long lens required reasonably fast shutter speeds, which in turn sometimes required pushing up the ISO. But modern noise-reduction tools have become so good that I don’t worry about that much. I know I can still get sharp, noise-free results that will hold up even in a large print. It’s actually quite liberating.

Of course I would still try to keep the ISO as low as possible, which meant using as slow a shutter speed I could get away with to avoid pushing up the ISO more than necessary. But a rocking boat with a telephoto lens is a recipe for blurry photos, even with image stabilization, so at longer focal lengths I kept the shutter speed high – at least 1/350th of a second.

I also kept the camera in continuous shooting mode, and fired off bursts of three or four frames at a time. Often the first and last frames of a burst would be a little soft, because pressing or releasing the shutter button would cause some movement. But the middle frames, where I was holding the camera steady, would be sharp. Using that technique meant having more photos to edit, but it was worth it to get sharp images with as little noise as possible.

Photographing from a moving boat can also sometimes require making quick decisions about composition. I actually started my career photographing mostly wildlife, and with moving subjects like animals you often have to make instantaneous decisions about composition – where to place the animal in the frame, whether to include its surroundings, how much of those surroundings, and so on. That training has helped me with landscape photographs. Even on land I sometimes have to make fast compositional decisions before the light changes. And a moving boat can force you to make those choices almost instantaneously.

I think any kind of cross-training you can do as a photographer is helpful. Practicing street photography can help your nature photographs. Learning studio lighting will increase your understanding of natural light. Composing landscape photographs can help you make better compositions with wildlife images, and vice versa. It’s all photography, and while there are certain skills that might apply more to some genres than others, there’s a lot of crossover, and the most essential elements are the same.

I used all those varied skills in Antarctica while photographing the abundant wildlife, or composing landscape images from a moving platform. But it was all a lot of fun, as there were photographs everywhere, with an endless array of spectacular landscapes to go along with that Antarctic light. Sometimes during a long, lingering sunset I stayed on deck for hours, unable to tear myself away for fear of missing something. Except that occasionally, when things got really good, I’d go below and encourage people who weren’t already on deck to get out and photograph the magic light!

— Michael Frye

Peak, glacier, and clouds, Antarctica. 241mm, 1/350 sec. at f/11, ISO 100.

Ice tower and icefield, Antarctica. 315mm, 1/750 sec. at f/11, ISO 100.

Clouds, sunbeams, and icebergs, Antarctica. 196mm, 1/750 sec. at f/11, ISO 640.

Clouds, sunbeams, and whale spouts, Antarctica. 100mm, 1/750 sec. at f/13, ISO 100.

Ice-covered mountains under a mackerel sky, Antarctica. 37mm, 1/125 sec. at f/11, ISO 100. (This was actually photographed from land, with a tripod.)

Mountains and whitecaps, Gerlache Strait, Antarctica. 203mm, 1/750 sec. at f/16, ISO 3200. I wanted to ensure that both the foreground waves and background peak were in focus with this long lens, so I stopped down to f/16. Waters were rough, as you can tell, and the ship was pitching, so I set my shutter speed to 1/750 sec. to ensure getting sharp handheld images. Those settings, plus the low light levels late in the day, meant pushing the ISO up to 3200 to get the right exposure, but Adobe’s Denoise did a great job of dealing with the noise.

Icebergs and sunbeams, Antarctica. This was a handheld bracketed sequence – three shots, two stops apart. I used Lightroom’s HDR merge with “Auto-Align” checked to blend the three exposures, and it worked perfectly. 244mm, shutter speeds from 1/250 sec. to 1/4000 sec. at f/16, ISO 320.

Icebergs and mountains at sunset, Antarctica. 156mm, 1/1000 sec. at f/16, ISO 100.

Mountains, clouds, and icebergs, Antarctica. 274mm, 1/750 sec. at f/11, ISO 160.

Rocks and icebergs at sunset, Antarctica. 400mm, 1/750 sec. at f/8, ISO 1600.

Related Posts: Ice Sculptures; One Day in Antarctica; Leaping Penguins

Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He lives near Yosemite National Park in California, but travels extensively to photograph natural landscapes in the American West and throughout the world.

Michael uses light, weather, and design to make photographs that capture the mood of the landscape, and convey the beauty, power, and mystery of nature. His work has received numerous awards, including the North American Nature Photography Association’s 2023 award for Fine Art in Nature Photography. Michael’s photographs have appeared in publications around the world, and he’s the author and/or principal photographer of several books, including Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, and The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite.

Michael loves to share his knowledge of photography through articles, books, workshops, online courses, and his blog. He’s taught over 200 workshops focused on landscape photography, night photography, digital image processing, and printing.

The post Antarctic Light appeared first on Michael Frye Photography.

Roseate spoonbill nest with adults and nestlings, or “teaspoons”. It required patience to get the right light (soft light as a cloud passed over the sun), with all four birds in good positions, and their eyes all visible. Having the one nestling spreading its wings and opening its beak (begging for food) was a bonus. I composed this to include some of the saw palmetto the nest was built around to show the environment. 400mm, 1/1500 sec. at f/5.6, ISO 640.

Claudia and I recently returned from Florida, where I was one of the instructors at the Out of Merritt Island Bird Photography Conference. What a great event! This was the first time the Out of Chicago team has put on a bird-photography conference, and it was a lot of fun. My fellow instructors were all fantastic, the participants were super-nice – and eager to learn – and, as usual, the Out of Chicago team did a great job organizing the conference.

And then, of course, there were the birds. I had photographed birds in Florida briefly in 2002, but this was the first time I’d been back since then, and the first time I’d made a trip to Florida specifically focused on bird photography. And it’s a wonderful place for birds. There’s an incredible variety of species – and photogenic species at that – plus so many of the birds are easily approachable.

In Florida, species that would fly away at the first sight of a human in other parts of the country will allow you to practically walk right up to them. It’s pretty amazing. And it was an ideal place to hold a conference like this, since there were endless opportunities, and people could concentrate on learning lighting, composition, action, camera settings, and technique, rather than worrying about how to get close to a bird.

My fellow instructors in this conference all had different styles and approaches to photographing birds, which was cool to see, and I learned things from all of them. My teaching partner for the field sessions during the conference was Ray Hennessy, who is an amazing photographer and wonderful teacher. It’s rare to find people who are both good at what they do, and good at teaching it as well, but Ray is one of those rare birds (pardon the pun).

Although Ray and I have different styles in many ways, we definitely have things in common. Ray is known for his “small-in-the-frame” wildlife photos, where the animal isn’t necessarily filling the frame, and he’s using the animal’s surroundings to create something artistic, and add to the photograph’s mood.

And I try to do that as well. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you know that I like to make landscape photographs that convey a mood or feeling. And I try to do the same with wildlife images. I bring my landscape-photography sensibilities to photographing animals, which means trying to capture a mood, and, if possible, tell a story about the place – the habitat the animal depends on for breeding, resting, and feeding. That could be just a small slice of the animal’s surroundings, or it could be a much larger piece.

But I’m not averse to taking closeup photos of birds either. While I may look for certain things, the animals, light, clouds, wind, and surroundings dictate what’s possible. So I try to be opportunistic, and take what the situation gives me. If there’s an opportunity to create something moody, or something that shows the animal’s habitat (or both), great. But I’m not going to pass up the chance to photograph some interesting behavior or action, or just show a beautiful bird in beautiful light.

So here are some of my favorite photographs from Florida. I hope this selection shows some of the wonderful variety of birds, behaviors, and situations we encountered on the trip. It was a special treat to photograph these birds, both while scouting before the conference, and then during the conference alongside the participants and my fellow instructors. I hope we get to do it again.

— Michael Frye

P.S. Wildlife photography often requires fast shutter speeds to freeze motion. And that frequently means pushing up the ISO, which, of course, can produce noise. But you can encounter noise with landscape photos as well – at night or dusk, or when you need to fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of windblown branches, or in low-light situations where you can’t use a tripod and have to handhold the camera.

My next webinar addresses all the ins and outs of sharpening and noise reduction, and there’s still time to get the early-bird discount. Use the code SHARP20 to get 20% off until midnight tonight (Sunday, March 21st). Click here to sign up or learn more:

It’s All About the Details: Taking the Mystery out of Sharpening and Noise Reduction

May 18th, 2026

Tri-colored heron and black mangroves, Florida. I’m always looking for interesting surroundings for wildlife subjects to add interest and show where the animal lives. A recent freeze had caused the mangrove leaves along this waterway to turn rusty, creating photogenic patterns and colors. As this tri-colored heron moved along the bank, fishing, I picked a spot ahead of its path with some nice vegetation, sat down, and waited for the heron to move into position. 327mm, 1/350 sec. at f/11, ISO 2500.

Purple gallinule, Florida. Purple gallinules are related to coots, but much more colorful. In this case the surroundings weren’t that photogenic, so I got down low and close to show the bird’s colors, and waited for a moment with an interesting pose or gesture. 479mm, 1/1000 sec. at f/8, ISO 640.

Anhinga, Florida. I liked how the backlight glowed through the anhinga’s feathers and beak, and was able to get close enough to emphasize those elements in the composition. 433mm, 1/1500 sec. at f/8, ISO 500.

White ibis foraging in a saltwater marsh, Florida. Again, the surroundings weren’t that exciting, so I got low and close and tried to catch an interesting moment. 560mm, 1/1000 sec. at f/8, ISO 1600.

Great blue heron with nesting material, Florida. This was a spur-of-the-moment quick capture as I spotted this heron flying into its nest. Only later did I see that it had nesting material in its beak. 560mm, 1/1500 sec. at f/8, ISO 640.

Great egret adult and nestlings, Florida. This nest was in deep shade underneath a saw palmetto, but I liked the soft backlight, and looked for a moment when the nestlings were active. 560mm, 1/1000 sec. at f/8, ISO 400.

Snowy egret hunting through pond lilies in a Florida marsh. The chiaroscuro light created some drama here, with the pond lilies showing a small slice of characteristic habitat. 400mm, 1/2000 sec. at f/5.6, ISO 640.

American bittern with a snake in a Florida marsh. I heard a rustle in the reeds near a path, investigated, and found this American bittern with a snake it had caught. The snake had wrapped itself around a reed, as well as the bird’s beak and neck, in an attempt to surive. Eventually the bittern took the snake behind some reeds, out of sight, so I wasn’t able to see how this drama ended, but I assume the bittern prevailed. 400mm, 1/1500 sec. at f/5.6, ISO 5000.

Brown pelicans in breeding plumage roosting on rocks next to the Atlantic Ocean, Florida. This was rather harsh, midday light, but it worked for highlighting these two pelicans and the splashing water. 183mm, 1/1000 sec. at f/16, ISO 400.

White ibises and roseate spoonbills, Florida. I noticed this flock of white ibises, focused on them, and then two spoonbills banked and joined the flock at just the right moment. 391mm, 1/1500 sec. at f/5.6, ISO 1250.

Double-crested cormorants roosting in a tree at sunrise, Florida. Seeing this tree full of roosting cormorants with the sun rising behind them, I realized this was a great opportunity to show birds and some of the Florida habitat with dramatic light. 400mm, 1/1000 sec. at f/11, ISO 100.

Related Posts: Out of Merritt Island Bird Photography Conference; Leaping Penguins

Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He lives near Yosemite National Park in California, but travels extensively to photograph natural landscapes in the American West and throughout the world.

Michael uses light, weather, and design to make photographs that capture the mood of the landscape, and convey the beauty, power, and mystery of nature. His work has received numerous awards, including the North American Nature Photography Association’s 2023 award for Fine Art in Nature Photography. Michael’s photographs have appeared in publications around the world, and he’s the author and/or principal photographer of several books, including Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, and The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite.

Michael loves to share his knowledge of photography through articles, books, workshops, online courses, and his blog. He’s taught over 200 workshops focused on landscape photography, night photography, digital image processing, and printing.

The post Florida Birds appeared first on Michael Frye Photography.