As usual, the Friday morning was the worst part of the week weather-wise. The one part of the weekend that was planned to be devoted to photography featured a gloomy grey sky. No clear and frosty skies or heavy fog like all other days had been during the week and weekend. I glanced through the curtains and went back to bed. Sunday was a bright and sunny day and during a family walk throught the woods, I decided I’d go back around sunset and retry my luck.
When I arrived at my favourite location for landscapes, the sky was clear and sunset was nothing more than a faint orange hue somewhere near the horizon. Bummer. But: I could see a nice layer of ground fog was developing. I decided to wait a bit longer and not return home yet. That turned out to be a wise decision. The fog got denser so fast, one could see it happen with the naked eye. I noticed a faint purplish-pinkish color in the sky, away from where the sun had set. The sensor is much more sensitive to those colors than our eyes, so I knew this could become a fruitful evening. After two photographs with an exposure of several minutes, the pastel colors had gone and I was left with a blue tint that looked nowhere as nice as the colors in the shot above.
This time, I remembered to use the bubble level for a straight horizon, so processing the shot was a lot faster! Live and learn. I used a 3-stop ND filter for a longer exposure. The sensor then records more of the color (don’t know why, but it works). Also, because the fog moved rather quickly, the longer exposure meant the fog was recorded about everywhere in the image, giving the shot a more ethereal feel than without the filter.
Local Fen; Canon 5D Mark II w. 17-40/4L; 60s at F16 and ISO200; ND Grad filter, ND filter, tripod, remote release
