Tag Archives: fog

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Fog, Sky, and Clouds

March 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I made this photograph in a familiar location in the hills of Marin County, north of San Francisco — at a spot where I often make a brief stop when I visit other locations in this area. As I was surveying a slightly different panoramic view, I happened to see these rounded hills to my south, with their mantle of morning coastal fog drifting across their summits and dropping into valleys. Above this scene, higher clouds from a passing weather system rose much higher into the sky. This combination of bright morning light, drifting fog, and the brilliant higher clouds is unusual, so I had to make a photograph!

I decided to keep the hills at the bottom of the frame to emphasize the space in the sky above. When I made the exposure I did not commit to either a color or black and white rendition, though I did think about some of the issues with the colors in the scene (which I won’t go into here) and the possibility that it could be a stronger monochrome image. However, when working the image in post I began to see a way of taking advantage of the contrast between the sunlit soft forms of the high clouds and the sky that would work best in black and white. (The lower hills were already essentially monochromatic, though with a distinct blue tone.) Of course, once one goes to black and white there is a great deal of creative potential for how the image is handled, using the digital analogs of techniques that would have been employed in the traditional darkroom.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest, Fog

March 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fog drifts among the trees of a Yosemite Valley forest on a winter morning

A winter morning is almost always a good time to seek out fog in the meadows of Yosemite Valley, but things did not look too promising on this particular morning. We were up very early—well before dawn—and out and about. Since we had photographed from a higher spot with expansive views the previous morning, today it seemed like a good idea to look for more intimate scenes, so we began to check out a few of the centrally located meadows where the fog often forms. However, first looks revealed perfectly clear air. We wandered a bit more and eventually ended up near Curry Village where there was one fog-filled meadow. As far as we could tell, Stoneman Meadow was the only place in the Valley with the conditions we were looking for.

In much the same way that valley-filling fog can move back and forth, thicken and thin, rise and fall, the fog in this meadow was constantly changing. At first the rapid changes made it seem that the fog might be dissipating, so I began shooting fairly quickly, hoping to get something before it was gone. But soon there was a surprising resurgence of the fog, which drifted across the meadow into surrounding trees, rose higher, and hid the view. As it again began to thin I turned my attention to a bit of nearby dense forest and photographed the trees, late and small, as the fog gradually faded away.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest and Valley Fog

March 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Thick winter fog drifts among Yosemite Valley trees

Yes. Another foggy photograph. And perhaps not the last from this visit to Yosemite Valley at the beginning of March, though perhaps the final one from this particular vantage point. No guarantees, though. ;-)

At the risk of repetition, this fog drifting among the forest trees on the floor of Yosemite Valley and occasionally sloshing back and forth and rising up in front of cliffs, waterfalls, and domes was in continuous motion. While the big scene changed more slowly, the smaller vignettes within it changed very quickly. At times I would spot a potentially interesting bit of foggy landscape, swing my camera in that direction and frame up a composition… only to find that it had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. While some landscape photographs may be carefully and slowly and thoughtfully composed, this moody subject seems to require a lot of quick, instinctive shooting. Here I quickly rotated the camera to a vertical position so that I could include near and far trees, adjusted the focal length to keep an interesting combination of trees and fog in the frame… and keep some other extraneous elements out. I often wonder how people see an image of a scene at which I was present, and how different their impressions and interpretations might be. Mine were related to the dampness in the air, the muted light, the overall quite and stillness of the scene, and the nearby presence of several friends who were also shooting here on this morning.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest, Talus, Winter Fog

March 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter fog floats across forest and talus fields, Yosemite Valley

I’ll take a cold and foggy winter morning in Yosemite over a blue sky summer day anytime! On this morning I was up reasonably early, though unsure of what I might be able to photograph. The light down in the Valley was tending toward flat and gray, so I thought that it might make sense to go to Tunnel View and hope for some early morning sun that might illuminate the various layers of clouds and mist from behind. That never happened, so I turned my attention instead to the fog down in the Valley.

It is common at this time of year for fog to form in the Valley after precipitation, and it had rained all of the previous day and was threatening to on this morning, too. When the fog starts to form, almost anything can happen. There might only be thin, wispy bits of fog below, or large clouds of fog may form and drift back and forth and up and down the Valley, lowering so that tree tops are visible or rising to cover the upper slopes of peaks and cliffs. On this morning there seemed to be thicker fog far up the Valley, but in the middle section and just below us the fog was thin enough that as it drifted across the forest some trees almost always remained visible. Photographing this was a matter of using a very long lens and then watching closely as the conditions evolved. For a while it might seem like nothing photographically special would happen, and then some combination of fingers of fog moving through trees, a bit of clearing somewhere, a sudden but silent movement of the clouds would happen, and suddenly a composition would appear out of nowhere and often just a suddenly disappear. Here the fog was drifting up into the talus slopes near the base of El Capitan.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: fog

Fog, Sky, and Clouds

Forest, Fog

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.