Fog and Trees, Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Forest trees are almost completely obscured by evening fog in Yosemite Valley.
If you have been watching some of my recently posted photographs, you have perhaps figured out that I’m working on a series of photographs in which mist and fog and clouds obscure to a greater or lesser extent some underlying elements of the landscape. (If you haven’t been watching my recent posts… you can still be my friend! ;-) In a few of them I am seeing how far I can take this and still have an interesting photograph. This one marks a further step along that path in that at least half of the scene has little or no detail, being almost completely obscured by drifting fog, and even in the areas where trees are still visible the details are very muted.
I’m thinking about just how little detail I can retain in the scene and still retain a sense of form. And this isn’t the most extreme in the series at all. I’m working on another one which retains less “solid” detail than this one. (It may be that it works as a print but perhaps not as a web jpg, in which case I may not post it here – we’ll see.)
The photograph was made at – icon alert! – Wawona Tunnel View above Yosemite Valley on an evening when I had little interest in shooting the classic view of the Valley itself, but had instead gone there because I was almost certain that fog would form among the trees on the Valley floor as the temperature dropped following a rainy day. If anyone had noticed me shooting on that evening among the line-up of dozens of photographers, they might have been perplexed as to why I was aiming a very large lens down when the famous view was obviously straight ahead! ;-)
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
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You are such an awesome photographer!
Interesting questions! This scene would not be very interesting at all – at least in photographic terms – without the fog. It would just be more or less another section of dense forest. Although the trees seem like the subject, I think that to some extent the fog is more so the subject. In a way you might imagine a different photograph in which something other than trees was barely visible through the fog – rocks, people, buildings, etc.
I think that “foggy” images also invite the viewer to engage the image in ways that might not be so obvious with a more clearly representational image in which details were plainly obvious. The interested viewer has to (not just “may”) look much more closely to find the details, and the diffuse quality suggests strongly that there are things in the image that are not quite visible. And I think that all of use have experienced fog and mist, and we probably can fill in associations of sound, temperature, moisture, and all the rest.
The fog also abstracts the subject. Yes, there are trees, but they are only partially there and can be seen as something a bit less “tree-like” than in a clearer photograph that reveals the objective details of trees.
Dan
What is it that draws photographers to scenes like this. I just posted an image of trees and fog myself – and I felt so bad that I could not stay there at the moment and explore the scene.
You series is lovely, the fog is not revealing too much here, but the shape in the composition gives a hint what could be scene. On the other hand, if the fog wasn’t there, what would we see – would the scene be as interesting as without the fog. Since I have never been at the location, I do not know, but I wonder if the fog turns this landscape into something special.
Thanks, Ron. Those muted details are barely visible in the web version of the image. I had a chance to make a print yesterday, and I feel like it works even better that way.
Dan
Absolutely breathtaking Dan, I love photographing trees and fog together, always seems to make for a great capture.
Love the muted details of the trees in this one!!