Clouds I could touch

Foggy conditions are magic for landscape photographers; hard to predict but when you’re lucky enough to catch it in just the right place and with just the right place you know you have struck gold. Fog adds an otherworldly sense of mystery and beauty to an otherwise mundane everyday setting. It is like being inside a dream; with a cloud that you can touch.

Visiting family in the countryside this weekend I woke up at 5.45am and peered out the window. Not only was the fog as thick as pea soup and shrouding most of the landscape, there was also a full moon glowing brightly just before the sunrise. I donned shoes and camera; this was too good to miss. With little time left before sunrise I quickly captured these great exercises in simplicity:

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Trees in the Fog
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Click to see large size on my gallery! Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Full Moon in Fog
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Click to see large size on my gallery! Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Solitary Tree in Fog
Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Shooting in fog is fairly straight forward but watch your exposure. The fog can trick the light meter and cause underexposure. On the other hand you definitely do not want to burn out any of the delicate highlights so watch your histogram closely, don’t overexpose any of the channels. You also need to work fast as this sort of fog will very quickly be burned away by the rising sun. This shooting session lasted only 15 minutes.

As the sun was rising I ended with a panorama showing the whole scene. I like it for the light and atmosphere but the composition I find a bit lacking. I would normally never ever include power lines in a shot as I hate anything man made in my landscape shots, but here they’re below the horizon and they sort of walk across the scene disappearing into the fog and horizon nicely so I left them in.

Click to see large size on my gallery! Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

Remember to type image title!
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“It’s a fake” – the digital art version

Finally; after processing these I wondered what I would get if I took the Solitary Tree in Fog photo and “borrowed” the moon from the Full Moon shot. The result is this rather nice composite photo.

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The Moon & The Tree – digital art
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I usually don’t add or remove major content from my photos; this image is digital art and not a photo and an exception to my general rule. In this case I had to see the composite result and I must admit I find it slightly magical. It was 15 minutes of magic. 15 minutes inside a dream!

PS. I slept another hour after this shoot and had a nightmare that I was in Perth and my memory card was erased due to the camera getting wet. It was vivid enough to make me check the camera as I woke up. I reckon it’s safe to say you’re passionate about photography when nightmares involves hero shots getting deleted!

4 Comments on “Clouds I could touch”

  1. looks like a great morning Flem.
    fog always looks great! it's fun just being in it, we've not had much this year near me, usually is alot. only thing is i only ever see it when i'm driving to work 🙁 when i get up to take photos there's never any fog.

    think i like the 4th one the most. it is a tough one though, they all look good.

    hehe sounds like a interesting dream you had.
    just as long as they stay as dreams, don't want you becoming psychic too! :-p

  2. Thanks Stephen, yeah it was a super good morning very enjoyable. Field of Dreams!

    The dream was so bloody real I woke up wondering if it happened – turned on the camera to check if the fog shots were still there!

  3. Weirdest bit for me in the dream is that I was in Perth (although it didn't look like the actual Perth) and I was aware in the dream that it was slightly weird as I had just shot fog photos in Denmark.

    Usually my dreams are made up entirely of people I don't know and take place in locations I've never been to! This time I knew it was Perth although not as we know it.

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