Tag: fog

On a Foggy Night

For a week the area where I live had fog. Every day. Every night. Whole day. Whole night. It was beautiful, smooth, thick, milky white fog. I love fog. It adds mystery and depth to everything.

Unfortunately, I was busy whole week and could not get out to photograph. But one night I just dropped everything I did, picked up my camera and went out on a walk around the neighborhood. While I may have not done any greatest hits, I still enjoyed reconnecting with what I love using even smallest moments I can carve out of sometimes busy days.

Here is in some sense a good representation of my suburban neighborhood and probably many other neighborhoods across US: proudly displaying their flag on their home, keeping cars outside despite having garage because the garage is filled with things that they still cherish, things that they find it hard to part but which they will unlikely to ever use again.

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Strolling thru Kubota Garden

Sometimes plans don’t work out and I’m glad they don’t. One weekend another photographer and I were planning to hike up a mountain trail to photograph a lake in snow. When time came my buddy bailed out and I did not want to risk hiking in snow after dark alone. Instead I went to Kubota Gardens in Seattle and spent a day there.

Typically, when for places like parks or gardens close to home I try to find time during week or go with family during weekend for one or two hours to do photography. This was the first time I spend whole day in one relatively small garden. And it felt really good – photograph without rushing, lying under a tree, taking time, observing.

I’ve fell in love with this garden.


Early Morning Mist


Let Me Offer My Hand


Passage


Bush on Fire


Due Drops Caught in a Web


Simple Yellow on Red


Lying on the Ground Looking Into Sunny Sky


Explosion


Butterfly


Light

Shadows in Fog

I like photos in which fog is taking over, photos where viewer need to take an effort to make out what’s on the photo. So, when I was returning once from Snoqualmie Pass and I saw clouds falling down, dispersing into fog and taking over the mountains I exited freeway at the closest exit and photographed it.

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Being Late

I have a pattern of being later. I always get too involved in photographing wherever I’m and end up being late for photographing sunset wherever I want to photograph sunset. Or I wake up just a little bit late and late to photographing sunrise.

Sometimes it plays out well though. Like in this case I was driving to photograph sunrise at mountain Rainier and I was late, I was too late.

On the way there I was passing a lake as usual. The morning was very cold and steam was rising from the lake. The sky had just a touch of pastel pink from a distant sunrise. I decided that this scene was worth stopping and photographing. Even though I was in a hurry. And that’s how I met the sunrise.

Fog over Golden Bridge

I always wanted to photograph Golden Bridge and Presidio in fog but in many times I had been to San Francisco I had never seen fog over Golden Bridge. Other photographers seemed to get it every time. Not me.

This May on the way back from The Lost Coast we spent a couple of days in San Francisco. One morning Very early before sunrise I went to photograph hoping to get lucky and see that mythical fog. And lucky I was. The was fog. And not just in the morning. It was there whole day. In fact it caused our flight to be delayed in the evening.

The fog was different from the one I used to. I’m used to fog in still windless weather. Golden Bridge fog was combined with strong winds. It was constantly on the move, thickening and lightening, lifting off and dropping back to the ground, letting sun in or blocking it off all together, constantly reshaping landscape.

It presented me with new and constantly changing photo opportunities. I could not get enough of it. I was running from one place to another and then back. The only limit was time.

Misty Morning

The first morning in Shelter Cove was filled with fog. And it was the kind of morning fog when the air is still and quiet. It was moving, swirling, raising and falling back to Earth breaking into myriad of due drops.

We chased the fog around but it was tough to find a good view point to get a good photos of Shelter Cove in fog. Eventually we found one:

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After that we dived into the fog and went to Black Beach:

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Over the Wing

As I wrote a while back Photography Starts on a Plane. My photographic journey to Shelter Cove starts on an airplane too. This time our seats were over an airplane wing, which limited a view out of our cabin window to pretty much the wing only. That did not stop me from photographing. I just focused on lines and graphics of the airplane wing and specular lights created by the Sun.

Flying thru a cloud:

Rhododendrons or Not?

Recently I went with a fellow photographers to photograph rhododendrons which are common on eastern hills of Olympic mountains. We were hoping for fog to have a good separation of rhododendron bushes from trees in background.

There was fog but not where we needed it. The only option left was to use shallow depth of field. My fixed 50mm lens got second life. I had not used it for a while but it was most appropriate in that case since it had the widest aperture of all my lenses.

Rhododendron
Rhododendron

The other options was to let it blend with with forest, make it part of it.

Spring Green
Spring Green

Did I mention there was fog but not where we needed it? Well, we ended up spending most of the time photographing that fog that was somewhere else:

Fog Over Lowlands
Fog Over Lowlands

Fog Over Puget Sound
Fog Over Puget Sound

Black and White – Naturally

I love color photography. At the same time I have a great appreciation for good black and white photography. Once in a while I do black and white photos myself albeit not as often as color. To be more accurate I do monochromatic photos as I like to tone or colorize them.

And sometimes the nature presents a photo that is monochromatic even in color. Like this photo of fog over Port Angeles. This is an actual color photograph and as you can see it is almost monochromatic.

Fog over Port Angeles
Fog over Port Angeles

Close to Home

Lots of things are waiting to be discovered right around the corner. You just need to make the first step toward them.

I adore photograph made in fog. At the same time there have not been much fog where I live. At some point I share my fog obsession with another local photographer and she suggested me to go to Carnation Valley in fall.

It is only about 10 minutes drive from where I live. To my surprise even when it is clear sky and sunshine outside the valley, the valley itself is filled with thick thick fog. This is likely because there are a lot of marshes there. Driving downhill into the valley is like diving into the fog.

From that point on I always go to Carnation in fall. Here are some photos I’ve made this year:

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