Thursday, October 22, 2020
So, here is the situation. I tried to go out on Wednesday with the promise of some low clouds over Yadkin and Surry Counties. When I woke up, the cloud reports were much less than I was hoping and I decided to hold off until afternoon when the second wave of clouds was supposed to come in. Well, The day wore on and shortly after lunch it was clear that the skies were going to remain…well, clear. Before I turned in to go to bed, I checked the weather once again and saw that there was going to be a good chance of fog on the Blue Ridge Parkway between Boone and the Linville area. There were not many clouds forecasted, and the fog was only predicted to last until 9am. With sunrise at 7:30ish, that was not going to give me much time at all to work. I was pretty sure that I was going to have only time enough to work a single location as driving would eat up the time. The question was where did I want to go?
Looking at the detailed forecast on my Clear Outside App, it was looking like the chances were a little better near Linville for longer lasting fog. It had been right at a year since I had visited Linville Falls, which turned out to be during the Fall. I had hiked the lower trails, but had not spent much time at all on the upper route which I was kind of interested in doing in the fog. I was thinking a panorama at the upper cascades might be really nice. I was imagining the colors would be just about right there, and if I played my cards right, going early on a weekday, I might actually not have tons of people to contend with. It was a little bit of a drive from home though, and I was going to need a little over an hour to get there. It was a good plan though, and I was excited about spending a couple of hours at Linville Falls.
The clock rang at 5am and for once I was actually awake before it went off. I checked the weather and saw that the fog forecasts were pretty much as I remembered them from the previous night. I got my morning social media posting done and got out of bed and got ready to head out. I was on my way around 6am which gave me plenty of time to get there and even do a little hiking before the light of morning hit. I wasn’t planning on getting any sunrises because there was really no chance of any color with only low clouds and fog in the area. I did, want to be in position by the time the light levels rose enough to make foggy images though because there was just no guarantee on how long the fog was going to last, and I certainly didn’t want to be there when the crowds got there.
As I was pulling out of the garage, I could see everything crisply, even the stars. This was not a good sign, because there was a fog advisory in effect for Wilkes County until 9am, just like I had seen for Boone and Linville. If this was the fog that I was to expect, I was not going to have a good morning at all. The entire trip up the mountain was clear and I saw nothing that was going to give me the atmosphere that I was after for this morning’s shoot. I did continue because I was up and had my gear so I might as well try something.
The first bit of fog that I saw was after I had entered the Blue Ridge Parkway. It wasn’t much, but there was a little bit of hope that I might have something worth shooting when the sun came up. I continued South, headed towards Linville Falls. The closer I got to Blowing Rock, the more fog I started to see, but it wasn’t much at all. The first time I actually saw good conditions was as I was passing Cone Manor which I had shot in the fog before and knew that there were good compositions to be had there, but I was still wanting to get Linville Falls. I continued on with interest in how Price Lake was looking. There is a long exposure shot that I was wanting to make there that would look good in the fog and since I was going to be going by I might as well check it out.
By the time I got to Price Lake, only a few minutes down the road the fog was all gone which really surprised me. I am used to seeing fog over the lake when conditions are right and for there to be thick fog at Flat Top Manor and not here was a little odd. I still had time to get to Linville, but what if the conditions were similar to what I was seeing at Price Lake? I wouldn’t have time to back track and come back to where I know there was fog. I had a choice to make here. I could continue on with my plans and hope that the weather would cooperate with me, or I could turn around and go back to Cone Manor where I knew the conditions were good. The phrase a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush came to mind and I decided to take advantage of the great conditions where I knew they were. I went back North towards the crafts center.
I was all proud of myself for making this last minute change of plans to take advantage of what I was seeing now. That happiness and back patting lasted right up until I got to the parking lot and saw cars in every one of the spaces in the first section. Then there were several others further into the lot. All of a sudden I had visions of tons of people walking around in the dark like zombies. This was not going to be good at all, but hopefully they were all at the manor house which wasn’t my main reason for being here. I contemplated the situation for a brief time before deciding to dive right in with my new plan. I turned the truck off and grabbed my gear. I could hear talking in the distance which made my skin crawl. I love being out in the fog all alone to really get into the frame of mind that it puts me in. I slowly walked down the steps expecting to see a full fledge block party going on complete with bonfires and a hired band. I came out at the horse barn and saw that the lights were on inside, but the noises weren’t coming from there. I saw nobody in the area that I was particularly interested in which was right in front of the barn. I could still hear voices very clear, but I was starting to think that they were all at the Manor House which was completely out of sight from where I was. I just kept thinking that there were a couple of folks there that really could have used an indoor voice, but at least they weren’t in the area that I was about to start working.
The conditions were fantastic with thick fog and very dim light as the sun was just starting to come up. I walked around to get an idea of the compositions that I was after as the light levels increased. My first one of the day was a tree set off to itself below the main line of trees at the barn. I got my position figured out and pulled the camera out. I fitted the 24-70mm lens as I wasn’t needing anything too dramatic here when it came to focal length. My main tool was going to be camera placement so that I could capitalize on the size of the tree without getting the trees to the left in the frame. I set the tripod up very low and worked out the placement to give me the composition that I was after. Once I got the basic composition set up I switched over the Live View and fine tuned the placement. I checked the histogram and found that the light levels were still very low and even at 30 seconds at f/5.6 I wasn’t getting enough light onto the sensor. The mood was fantastic here though and I wanted to capture what I was seeing without having to go to a minute or two worth of exposure. Instead I boosted the ISO to 200 which did the trick. I now had a reasonable exposure of the tree to show the detail in the bark.
I didn’t spend a lot of time on this one because I was pretty sure that I had what I wanted early on. Shooting in the fog is so very simple that it should almost be counted at cheating. There was no need for any filters because the light was so even through the entire scene and there was no glare to speak of anywhere. Photography in the fog is just all about atmosphere and mood. It was really coming together nicely and I was ready to find another composition which wouldn’t be difficult at all.
The light was coming up quickly with no additional color in the sky just as I had expected. It was just a matter of finding interesting trees, and I was right in the middle of a bunch of them. I came back a little bit and decided to work the same tree into another composition that also included the line of trees to the left of the fence. The fog made the receding trees look amazing and really added to the depth of the whole scene. This was another easy one to expose for, but a little more difficult to compose.
Separation between the trees became the biggest issue that I had to work with. There was a good deal of moving around left and right to get the right balance along with even distance between trees. Then came the up and down movements that were needed in order to keep balance between the background trees while keeping them physically under the primary element in the forefront. The framing was dictated by the strong diagonal branch to the right of the tree in the front. That became the top of the frame which balanced out well with the minimal amount of ground that I included as a visual anchor for the trees. The converging diagonals helped to bring the eyes to the lead tree and also provided a nice framework for the one lone tree to the right which was a nice side benefit to the whole composition. It all just worked so well, and this became an early favorite of the morning. Not bad considering that it was only my second composition of the day.
As with the first one, I didn’t spend a lot of time here once I got the composition set. The conditions weren’t changing except for the light levels. I was back at my native ISO 100 and was shooting at a very reasonable 15 seconds at f/11. The fog wasn’t going anywhere and the quality of light was very stable. Like I said, photography in the fog should be considered cheating it is so easy. The only difficulty is in finding appropriate subjects and I had those in spades out here. Speaking of which I was ready to work another view.
The last view that I decided to shoot of these trees was very closely related to the first two compositions. The difference was that I was going to shoot from the opposite direction, but still including the original tree from the first composition of the day. This composition was a bit more difficult to capture than the first ones because there were more elements in place. I started out as a vertical composition using a bench as a foreground leading to the fence which took your eyes through the scene. I liked it, but the trees seemed to be minimized a little too much for my tastes while the bench wasn’t nearly as prominent as I was wanting. I could have gone to a wider angle lens, but there were other elements in the background that I wanted to avoid, so I needed to stay at this rough focal length.
I tried to go with a horizontal approach that avoided the bench, but that didn’t really work as I was omitting too much of the lead tree and that was my visual anchor. That tree dictated that I was going to have to use a vertical composition, but I didn’t like the bench in the foreground. I ended up getting in closer and going a bit wider than I had been. The fog helped to simplify the background so that was good and I was able to get the full character of the lead tree and I used two trees offset to the left and right as background elements while using the lead tree to mask the tree directly behind it. You can still see it, but it blends into the composition much better and helps to provide separation from the three distinct trees in the frame. The fence still brings your eyes through the frame and the slight divot helps to allow your eyes to jump back and forth over the fence which was a very important factor since the one tree to the left was a crucial element in this composition.
Once I settled on the composition, the exposure was the easy part. As with the other ones, I wasn’t faced with any situations that would need filters so an easy shot of 2.5 seconds at f/11 was all that was needed for this one. I did a couple of slight variations on the composition to get the right balance, but that was all that was needed. After that I was pretty much done with the trees by the barn. I considered my options at this point and tried to decide my next step. I could go back to the Manor House, but I was still hearing some commotion back there and decided that I didn’t want to risk that. I recalled a while back I had done a quick hike on the trail crossing the Parkway and remembered thinking how many great woodland subject there would be in the fog. Well, I had fog, and I was here so there was no time like the present to set off on a short hike. I had about an hour left of fog from what the forecasts were calling for and that should be enough time to work myself up to the meadow which would have some good views once the fog cleared.
As I hiked down the trail I paid particular attention to the pasture to my left. It has always interested me, but I had never really found the right conditions to shoot it in. There were a lot of interesting trees that were lining the trail which got me thinking about some more foggy tree compositions but I wasn’t finding anything that was visually separated enough to really work as a composition. As I was looking I noticed a grove of three tree trees on the hill opposite of the pasture. These trees caught my attention as one of them was still partially covered in red leaves, one was bare and had an interesting structure, while the third one was a little stumpy thing with a mess of branches. The three very different trees contrasted with themselves so well and I really liked what I was seeing in the fog.
I decided that this was going to be worth a shot or two. I knew that I didn’t want the sky involved in the composition and chose to make it a rather abstract view of Fall with the fog passing by. For this, I was going to need my 70-200mm lens to get the intimate composition that I was after. As with earlier in the day, I wasn’t going to need any filters because the light was very flat here, and with the fog, there was really no need for a polarizer as I wanted a little less contrast than normal. I found the right place to set the camera up based on where I could get a clear shot through the trees right to the side of the trail. I framed up a nice and tight composition that focused on the three individual trees along with the different textures that they each had.
As I was framing up the image, I was really happy with the fact that the red leaves were just in the left part of the frame which left the right side for a bit of contrast in color to help make the red pop, and bring more attention to that tree which I found was the most interesting of the three. I tried several different variations on the framing for this image, but in the end decided that this composition worked the best. I had several to choose from with different amounts of fog involved. I decided to go with one with a minimal amount of fog so that the textures and the red leaves would come through a little bit better. The fog was used to soften the background to allow more of the attention to fall on the trees. It was a simple composition and one that I don’t really do all that often, but I really liked it as a woodland image. It captured the Fall season I think without going for the typical saturated colors and bright, in your face, leaves. I actually really liked the fact that most of the leaves had recently fallen as it tells more of the story than when they were still on the tree.
While I was working on the grove of trees on the opposite side of the pasture, I developed a bit of an interest in the bare tree that I had included previously. I decided that I wanted to get a composition of it on its own. The angle that I was at wasn’t the right one for this tree though. I needed to go up the trail just a bit more to get the right angle for this one. I kept the same long lens attached as it gave me a great amount of reach and the ability to isolate these trees quite well. I did find the right angle after just a little bit of looking. It was then just a matter of finding a hole in the trees that I could shoot through. The exposure was the same as the last one had been so it was a very simple matter of making the image once I found the composition.
By this time, the fog was starting to clear off a little bit and I was seeing a lot more detail back towards the Manor. In that detail was some really nice Fall color that I wanted to capture. I had never considered this as a composition before, but with the fog enveloping the trees it was almost magical. I was going to need to figure out exactly how to work the composition though as this had some interesting bits and pieces to it, and a couple of distractions.
There were cows in the pasture which I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use or not. There were several of the rather complicated trees in the midground that I had to decide whether or not to use, and then there was the little building that was situated in the middle of the fence. This building wasn’t a barn, and it wasn’t big enough to be a real element, but it was white which made it stick out like a sore thumb. If I composed in a way that the little structure had enough visual weight to make sense to the scene, I was missing out on a lot of the color on the mountain to the rear. If I included all of the color in the background, I was using the scraggly trees as framing points to the image and then had a lot of extra sky and pasture included along with the cows. I just couldn’t figure out how to make this work because my favorite version of the composition put the little white building smack in the middle of the frame where the eyes would lock on it and stay there. Nothing was working out for this and the building was a distraction no matter how I composed the image.
My solution was to shoot a bunch of different variations of this scene with different compositions so that hopefully I could figure it out when I got it home. My solution came in the form of Photoshop unfortunately. I don’t like when that happens, but my absolute favorite composition was one that I had shot as a 16:9 crop with the two black cows as the foreground interest. They made way to the mid ground where the left and right framework came into play with the lone scraggly tree to the left and the rising hill with two other trees leading up to a read leaved tree. These trees framed the golden trees in the background with the sky opening up to the upper right balanced by the fog closing in the upper left of the frame. The image was very well balanced and the cows added an element of life and scale to the scene. It was that building that killed the image as it pulled the eyes right to the center of the frame and held them captive. My only solution was to remove that building in Photoshop and rebuild the fence behind the building. The fog helped keep the details kind of muddied there to make the cloning job much easier. It was a lot easier to remove than I had thought, and while I don’t like doing that, I think that for the sake of the image it was the right decision to make. I can take solace in the fact that it was not an instrumental part of the composition and I didn’t add something to the composition that wasn’t there. It was a basic cloning of an element about half the size of one of the cows.
These are the choices that are usually the hardest as a photographer. At least the way I do it, I strive to capture the scene that was actually there in the way that I saw it. I don’t like doing a lot of manipulation to the images and large scale cloning falls into that category for me. When I do it, I really do have to weigh the benefits against the credibility of the image. If I think that it will alter the true spirit of the scene then I won’t do it. If I am changing a large element, I won’t do it either. This was something that was small and honestly isn’t missed at all in the frame. The omission of it provides a much better flow for the entire image and allows your eyes to travel all through it instead of stopping at that first element in the center of the frame.
Not only the composition a little more difficult here compared to my previous ones of the morning, the exposure was also a bit more complicated. I was now including a chunk of sky that I didn’t want to be so bright that it pulled your eyes out of the frame. Having that corner of the frame filled with sky was nice since it balanced out the fog in the opposing corner, but the exposure wasn’t nearly as even. That corner was noticeably brighter than the foggy corner which was not what I wanted. A simple addition of a Singh-Ray Galen Rowell 2-stop soft edge ND grad filter pulled the exposure back just enough to bring back that visual balance. That made the exposure simple once again and I was able to use that combination with my 70-200mm lens for all the variations that I shot.
As I was shooting, I was noticing that the sky was starting to change quite a bit. The fog was lifting and the mostly clear skies were starting to become more visible. The warm sun was also coming in from the left which was starting to hit the trees that I had started out shooting earlier. I was seeing a lot of potential for a wider angle landscape image so I pulled off the long lens and added my 24-70mm lens once again. I didn’t need to get too crazy on the wide angle because there were lots of details that I wanted to capture in this scene and needed to keep them reasonably well scaled to each other. With even more of the sky involved, I still needed to keep my grad filter in place and that 2-stop soft edge worked just fine here as well.
It took me a little while to get the composition figured out as I wanted to include the grove of large trees to the right as well as the colorful trees on the distant hill. The cows were still roaming the scene and I was liking them after my previous composition so as long as they were willing, I was happy to leave them included. I finally did come about the composition that I felt captured all that I wanted to include and I got the filter slid into place to control the sky. I took some exposures and liked the composition, but the lighting wasn’t nearly right for the image to work. I was going to need some sunlight, and with the clouds and fog clearing out I was suspecting that the sun was going to be hitting the hill soon enough. I just sat and waited for the light to change.
While I was doing that, I started to go through the images that I had shot for the day. I had nearly 100 frames already in just a little over an hour’s worth of work. Most of these were from this location waiting for the fog to do different things as I made exposures over and over of the same compositions. I had a good many images and I was already thinking that I had about seven images that were probably going to work out as keepers. It was this image that I was very excited about, but was really needing the sunlight to come into play and light up the hill to the right.
The longer I waited, the more the sky cleared and more the cows moved around. I probably waited for about 20 minutes here with the composition locked taking sporadic exposures as the light changed. Things then got very exciting for a very short amount of time as the sun peeked out of the clouds and washed the hill in a wonderful warm color. The grass was still in the shadows, but everything that I was wanting in the light was getting splashes of light. I must have shot a dozen exposures while the light was moving across the scene. I was just hoping that I was going to get lucky with one of these images getting a good combination of light as well as having the cows separated enough to keep them individuals.
When I got home and looked at the nearly 40 images that I had of this composition, there were three that I liked enough to pursue through post processing. Of the three, I picked the one that had the most even light on the hill with the large trees illuminated the best. The sky wasn’t quite as dramatic as the later images with the harsher light, but that was the one that I started to process. Surprisingly, I was able to bring out a good bit of detail to the sky which turned it into the best image by far of the three that I had pulled to the side. The only problem that I had with this image was the little while building that I had struggled with earlier. At least this time it was in a better place in the frame compositionally, but it was still so bright that it just pulled the eyes away from the the rest of the composition. I decided to do the same thing that I had done with the other composition and remove it in post. It was even smaller in this composition so the process was so much easier with this one. When I was done getting this image edited, it became my favorite of the day by a slim margin. I feel that it just captured the totality of Fall in the NC Mountains and that was my goal with this image.
After capturing the last of this composition, I saw that the sky was clearing up very quickly. The clouds were all gone and the fog was pretty much gone. It was 9am and that was when the fog was supposed to lift. That meant that it was time to call it a day. I headed back to the truck and tossed the bag in the back before heading home to see what I had. It had been a really good morning considering I had shot just one location and only spent a couple of hours there. Toni even said that I come back with more images on my shorter treks than my longer ones. The length of time has very little do do with it though, it is all about the light. Today was one of those days where the light was fantastic and really seemed to work with me. When shooting in the fog, I can just about close my eyes and point the camera in any direction and come back with a good image.
I do hope that you enjoyed coming along with me today and remember that if any of these images speak to you on a deep level, I would love the opportunity to match you up with your very own print. I feel that is the best way to enjoy a photograph as looking at it on the computer monitor will always be a letdown in comparison. If you are interested in learning photography for yourself, I can also help with that through One-on-One Instruction as well as workshops. I will be putting together a new batch of workshops for 2021, but there is still time to get into one of them this year so sign up today!
Thanks for joining me, and until next time…
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