Photographing Fog: Some Quick Tips

Spring is a great time to look for fog photos, especially in areas that were cold this winter, because as the warm air tumbles down onto the cool earth or onto the cold water in harbors or the ocean, fog is much more prevalent. In some areas that are close to the sea (San Francisco and Cape Cod come to mind), fog is pretty common all year round, but even in these areas, spring (and fall) are much more prone to producing that nice thick photogenic fog. Here are a few quick tips for finding and shooting foggy pictures:
Get up early in the morning: Fog is very common where warm air mixes with cool water (or a cool meadow) or vice versa. But the heat of the sun burns off most fog in the first half an hour or so after sunrise. I shot the photo here at dawn and in fifteen minutes, the fog was gone. Use a longer lens to magnify the effects on fog--singling out one boat using a moderate telephoto, for example. I used the equivalent of a 93mm lens for this shot, but also shot some pictures of an oyster boat with a 300mm lens and the fog is much denser looking--though they were shot only minutes apart. Be sure to add an extra stop to a stop-and-a-half of exposure using your exposure compensation feature, otherwise the fog will fool the meter into underexposing the scene. Fog reflects a lot of light and meters are easily fooled.  Try to find a fairly bold subject to stand out against the fog. Delicate shapes and details and soft colors get lost in fog, so strong lines and dark shapes work best. Shoot in the RAW mode if you are able and have the software to edit RAW files because then you can adjust both the exposure and the white balance after the fact. For the past year or so I've shot 100-percent of all my photos in RAW and I'd never go back to jpegs.  My last tip is to be sure that when you see fog you make an effort to find at least a few quick photos. When I'm illustrating photo books, almost regardless of the specific topic, I almost always need more photos of weather events (rain, fog, snow, ice) which means I don't shoot them enough and it's been a frequent source of frustration. So now when I see weather events, I try to force myself to get photos, just so that I don't get angry at myself for being lazy when I had the opportunities. If you do the same, you'll find a lot more variety in your landscape photos and you'll find a whole new realm of subjects to photograph.

Weather & Photography: Abandon Your Preconceptions

Preconceptions in photography can be a dangerous thing creatively. They can make you so focused on looking for the images that you see in your mind's eye that you ignore even better possibilities that are right in front of you and, even worse, they can cause you to get discouraged if you're not finding the types of images you wanted to find.

Preconceptions are especially problematic when it comes to weather because you simply can't predict (or change) it. As I mentioned in my last posting, last week I went to the Statue of Liberty to shoot pictures for several book projects. Lady Liberty is something I've always wanted to spend a day or two photographing and I had to make some pretty elaborate (and expensive) arrangements to make the weekend happen--car rental (simpler than driving my 20-year-old van in NY traffic!), hotel, ferry tickets, etc. The one thing I hoped for was a nice crisp blue sky on the days I'd be shooting. I'd done a lot of picture research leading up to the weekend and I knew exactly what I wanted: Liberty's green copper face against a rich blue August sky.

Naturally as the weekend drew closer, the weather reports were anything but encouraging (this is a perpetual pattern in my life) and, in fact, the weather people were calling for possibly the worst of all weather options: rain, thunderstorms and heavy cloud cover. Yuk. No blue skies were forecast. Surprisingly though, when we got out to Liberty Island the weather morons were wrong once again--the sky was perfectly blue with occasional puffy clouds giving relief from the intense sunshine. Yes, sunshine--and lots of it. In fact, the sun was so intense that after an hour of shooting around noon, I had to seek out the shade of a beautiful wooded grove.

As I was shooting though, I realized that the statue didn't look as great against a blue sky as I had thought it would--and the sunshine was creating really contrasty and unattractive shadows on her face. Then clouds started gathering and I lost the blue sky. As the cloud cover thickened I found myself losing the desire to keep shooting--and I nearly stopped. But determined to find good shots, I kept looking for new angles--low, sideways, from behind, etc. I was even able to shoot some silhouettes against the sun at one point. Sun and clouds began to mix and the sun started to hide more often than not (one point to the weather people). Then it became very apparent that a big storm was headed our way and the skies darkened and thunder and lightning began to scatter the crowds.

Suddenly though, with the sky getting darker and darker, Liberty's face began to take on a strange luminescent glow. Her face seemed to posses a far more soulful expression with the sunlight gone. It became clear to me that the beautiful sunny day shot I had envisioned wasn't the only great shot--and perhaps not even the best one. With rain and hail starting to pelt me, I kept shooting until the sky behind her crown was nearly black. These were far more dramatic shots that I had been looking for. Finally the skies opened up and I had to pull on a poncho and stop shooting, but I'd managed to get several shots that I liked a great deal.

Don't let bad weather stop your shooting and don't let your preconceptions of what "good" weather and good lighting is close your imagination to even better opportunities. You can't control the weather, but you can alter your creative vision to match the weather--and you certainly should.

Read More About Mammatus Clouds

In my last posting I talked about photographing an unusual cloud formation after a thunderstorm on Friday. Coincidentally over the weekend I was reading Westportnow.com, an excellent community blog that covers daily events in Westport, Connecticut and to my surprise and delight there was a posting about and a photograph of the clouds. According to the co-editor of the blog they are called "mammatus" clouds and their appearance was so startling that a group of people who were visiting an art gallery reception were lured out to the street to view them.

I'm so glad that others saw these rare and beautiful clouds and that others photographed them. I also found a posting called "Mammatus Clouds Forever" on a blog called Gothamist that includes a great gallery of reader photos! Apparently seeing these clouds in the Connecticut and New York area was quite an event.

I also found photos of them on the NOAA site. I'm really very psyched that I saw these clouds and I hope that I see them again soon. So next time there is a big thunderstorm, get outside and look up--you never know when you'll be part of a cloud photography happening!