Waterfall Color Correction [Copyright Andy Richards 2012]WATER IS white. “Thanks, Captain Obvious,” you are probably thinking. 🙂 Although it does seem like a pretty obvious statement, many photographs “suggest” otherwise. Often a color cast is subtle, but it is there. In addition to being white (well, technically clear), water is a reflective medium. We often want our water images to reflect colors and shapes from the surroundings. Good when it is part of the planned composition. A lot of water images, though, have an unnatural color cast that really needs to be corrected. There are a number of ways to fix them. Generally, they all involve adjustments to saturation, contrast, and brightness. The most effective way I know to remove a color cast from an image area that is supposed to be white is to de-saturate it. Sometimes, just that adjustment suffices. The trick, though, is to isolate just those areas of the image you want to de-saturate. Otherwise, de-saturation can take some of the “life” out of the image. Increasing contrast will often restore (at least some of) that life. You may also find that you need to reduce or increase image brightness. As culinary recipes frequently advise, adjust brightness (up or down) “to taste.” In order to make these adjustments “targeted” to just the areas that should be white, you are almost always going to need to use a selection/mask process of some sort. Options include making selections (and probably feathering them appropriately), using Photoshop’s Adjustment Layers and then painting on the mask, and using a luminosity mask, among others. It is easy and effective to make targeted adjustments using Adjustment Layers, by creating a layer (e.g., a hue/saturation layer) and making global adjustments to obtain the “look” you are seeking for the water. You simply ignore the changes (which could be garish) to the other parts of the image. You will “fix” them in the next step. Once you have the water as you like it, click onto the mask that was created for your adjustment layer. Control-i (for Windows) will invert the mask, hiding all of the changes you just made. You then can use a soft brush with low opacity to reveal the areas you want to show being changed (you could skip the invert step and use a black brush to hide the areas you want to go back to “normal,” but I prefer – in this instance – to hide all my changes and brush in (“reveal”) the changes where I want them. Here is a tip it took me a long time to learn to use to my advantage: use the opacity slider on the layer in the panel to reduce opacity while you work, so you can see the edges of the area better, and the effect of your changes as they blend with the original layer. This technique works well in most cases. In some cases, as you will see below, you may have better success making a selection before creating the adjustment layer. This will now only include the selected area in the layer mask (and the selection will only be in the mask – if you want to do the same selection again, go to the Select drop down in the top menu and choose “reselect”).
Photoshop’s Preset Adjustment Layers automatically create a mask for each layer. Choices include “brightness/contrast,” “hue/saturation,” and “color balance” among others.
ALTERNATIVELY, YOU can use an “app” that has been created for image adjustment (I like and use the NIK collection, by DxO, but there are others that will also work well, with varying amounts of “automatic adjustments” vs. user-controlled adjustments). This is the option I choose most of the time. It is easy, and the selection/masking process within the apps are better than I can usually do myself. My own “go-to” tool for correcting colors in water, fog and clouds is a plugin app for photoshop called NIK Viveza2. Originally offered by a company named (aptly enough) NIK Software, it was purchased by Google in 2012. The software was actually a “collection” of a few apps, including Viveza2, a filter program called ColorEFx, a B&W conversion app (Silver EFx), and a noise reduction app (“Dfine”). I mostly use Viveza2. Prior to the Google acquisition, there was a cost to purchase and at first, I pooh-poohed it when several of my friends were extolling its virtues. I had by then climbed a fair way up the Photoshop learning curve and using other techniques and actions, I felt that I could get the results I needed without resorting to what I though was “gimmicky” software at the time (but for those who are counting, I was wrong). 🙂 Once I tried it, I never looked back. Another one of the better options available to “power users” were something called “Luminosity Masks.” They basically were some sophisticated selections used to “mask” just the areas you wanted a photoshop adjustment to affect. Unfortunately, I never really got beyond some very simplistic uses of the masks. I know they are useful. My friend, Kerry Leibowitz uses them extremely effectively. But something along the way goaded me into the “free trial” of the NIK software. I was immediately convinced by its ease of use and general effectiveness and bought it. After the Google acquisition, Google made is a free download for a time. By 2018, Google had discontinued it, and DxO Software acquired the rights and released their “new and improved” version. My original software still works, and I have not felt the need to purchase the newer software – yet. It seems like each time Photoshop releases a full new version, getting the plugin in the right place and working properly becomes more complicated. There may come a day when I have to purchase the newest version. But for now, I use it often. There are competitive programs that will also work on these issues. For the most part, I haven’t been nearly as impressed with them mostly because they are not as “targeted,” and because they really are essentially filters (albeit with some pretty useful adjustment and customizing capability). But I think the Viveza2 is a stronger, more flexible and just overall better program when it comes to these “apps.”
Viveza2 Control Points – Adjusting the saturation slider will remove most color casts. Other necessary adjustments may be contrast and brightness – all included in the sliders here (if you click into the image you can see a much clearer depiction)
THE FIRST image is Scott Falls, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, near Munising. It is easy to see from the side-by-side presentation that the waterfall has a pretty distinct, mostly blue (but I also detect some unwanted magenta) cast. When viewing it alone, it is not so obvious. When “curating” images for post-processing, it is important to consider color casts and try to visualize the true color of the flowing water – as your eyes saw it, rather than as the sensor recorded it. I used Viveza2 to “fix” the blue cast. It is really simple to do. Just open the Viveza2 (in Photoshop, it is in the Filters menu – but it can also be used as a stand-alone and plugs into a few of the other popular post-processing software). Viveza2 uses a feature they call “U-point” technology, which creates masks using essentially AI. You simply click on the little circular target (“control point”), and then place it (and click) in the image, where you want to make an adjustment. This creates a drop-down menu within the image. The same adjustments can be made in the panel on the left, as well as hiding and/or deleting the control point, and linking multiple control points to make group adjustments. The in-image drop down includes several sliders one of which allows you to adjust the size of the area affected, as well. It is pretty smart, selecting the color or range of colors you want, even when there are other colors present. It takes some playing around to get the feel for it. I place the target in the area(s) of the water that needs color correction, and then use three of the drop-down menu sliders: Saturation, Contrast, and Brightness. It is mostly a function of saturation and I start by desaturating the image, often as much as 90% or more. You will see the water turn white. You may also see other adjacent areas desaturate. Use the size slider to control this. I often have a series of many very small adjustment points in a waterfall. The other two adjustments are very much “to taste.” I often add contrast (10-15% at the most). Sometimes I add brightness (again in very small amounts). It is a technique that works very well. When you use Viveza2, it automatically creates its own layer, so you can also use the opacity slider on the layer, and/or paint on the layer mask to make further fine-tuning adjustments.
Mad River Waitsfield/Warren, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2010]THE MAD River image has lots of problems. I chose it as an illustration, but probably would not choose it as an image to display on my website. The thing that makes it instructive here, is that it is a pretty “busy” image, with lots of individual areas of off-color water to be targeted. Using my Viveza2 plugin here would not only be “fiddly,” but would probably ultimately not come out the way I wished. Here, I used one of Photoshop’s selection methods called “Selective Color.” In the “Selection” drop down menu, I chose “Color Range,” and then clicked the eyedropper (the one on the left will select the range where you place it in the image) on an area of the blue-gray water that I wanted to color correct. This may take some trial and error. Adjusting the “fuzziness” slider in the dialog box will affect the range of colors around the selected color. More fuzziness will create more lattitude. Also, you may want to go to the tools menu (on the left in my illustration) and click on the eyedropper tool. Then, up on the options bar on top, change the sampling to 3×3 sample. Once I made the color range selection, I made a saturation adjustment layer and reduced the saturation. I then made a contrast layer and increased the contrast a bit. This resulted in the water change I wanted, but it also desaturated the surrounding rocks and dropped leaves more than I wanted to (remember that the adjustment layers will only consist of the selected area, but this shows that perhaps my settings were a bit “too fuzzy”). Using the same selection as before, I inverted the selection (Selection/Reselect/Inverse) and created a second saturation layer, in which I adjusted the saturation back to taste. The result created too much saturation in the green leaves in the right foreground. Using a brush on the layer mask for the saturation layer just created, I brushed out (black hides) the areas I wanted to tone down. I usually use a reduced-opacity (between 30-50%), very soft brush for this. Another way would have been to bring the file back into Viveza2 and select and desaturate the oversaturated elements. Fiddly. You probably should make a determination if the image is worth the work before going too far down the road with it.
Color Range Selection
I USED Viveza2 again on the Glade Creek Gristmill. Not only was it convenient to use that software to correct the water, but as you can see, I was also able to take the slight blue cast out of the weathered wood building (placing additional “Control Points”) and add some contrast and brightness to the surrounding foliage. Our trip to Babcock State Park in West Virginia (site of the gristmill) was mostly a dreary, rainy experience. The gray skies contribute to the shadows and consequent blue cast of the water.
Glade Creek Gristmill Babcock State Park, West Virginia [Copyright Andy Richards 2011]FOG IS another tricky situation. Essentially the same as clouds, we generally associate it as white (but perhaps subtly less bright than clouds). The same adjustments will be used here: saturation, contrast, and brightness. For the most part, I use the same tools and techniques with fog as I do with white-water. Because the water is more vapor, and often less reflective, care must be taken not to overdue he adjustments here. A favorite example for me is my shot of the barn and mountains scene in Barton, Vermont in 2010. We had a wonderful fall morning for photography, with the early light producing saturated colors, and the cold temperatures following a very wet period of several days, creating spectacular fog (or perhaps low-hanging clouds). It was a couple years after I made the image and posted it here and on my LightCentricPhotography Website that I actually became aware of the problems with the image. With this image, it was a pretty simple fix. Just open it in Viveza2, set a few control points across the cloud bank, desaturate, add a small amount of contrast and brightness. Viola’! A much better looking image, I think.
Burton Hill Farm Scene Irasburg, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2010]THERE ARE more subtle fog examples. My Obow Bend shot of the Snake River in Jackson, Wyoming is perhaps my best example of very subtle fog. When shooting around water in the early mornings, we often hope for a cold night and a cool, clear dawn. If the conditions are right and the water is warmer than the air, conditions often produce really nice, surface fog. Conditions were there this morning. The original image – perhaps because of the shadows – rendered this fog what I thought was an unnatural bluish color. Viveza2 did a great job of removing the blue cast, while preserving the reflective colors in the water. At first glance, the viewer may not even realize the fog is there. It is. 🙂
Oxbow Bend; Snake River Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming [Copyright Andy Richards 2012 All Rights Reserved]THE VERY small, shallow ponds (they are called lakes on the map) found in the relatively flat Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan’s U.P., create similar conditions, particularly in a cold morning following a clear night. I have been to, and photographed Moccasin Lake in the forest a number of times. The image here though, is one of my favorites and came during a very cold sunrise. The orange/pink color of the early rising sun colored the fog. In the original image, the camera sensor recorded what I felt was too much color information – enough so that it looked unreal to me and was not what my eye/brain computer “remembered.” Again, Viveza2 to the rescue. But in this case, I wanted some of the color to remain, in keeping with the warm morning sunlight in spite of a very cold morning. For that reason, the saturation adjustment was gentler, leaving, I hoped, a more subtle color correction. Wanting the foliage colors to show a bit through the fog, I made a stronger correction on the surface fog than I did on the low-hanging fog.
Moccasin Lake Hiawatha National Forest Munising, Michigan [Copyright Andy Richards 2012]AT THIS point, a reader might think I believe that every image containing clouds, whitewater, or fog has to be “fixed.” Not so. There are certainly images in which the water-based medium takes on surrounding colors, and we want them. There are certainly times when reflected color will add drama and atmosphere to the image. In 2010, I photographed a small, roadside pond just south of Barton, Vermont on U.S. Route 5, named “Bean Pond.” Again, I have shot here several times and come away with what I think are some very nice, atmospheric images. As the shot below illustrates, this is an instance when rendering the water vapor pure (or near pure) white would not be “fixing” the image. It would, in my view, be deleterious. I did do some work on the fog hanging over the water surface. But the morning-lit cloud is what I think gives the image its essential character.
Bean Pond Barton, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2010]LARGER EXPANSES of water may well require a wholly different approach. The color of the water surface of a large body of water is almost wholly a function of the reflection of the sky. That is why water often appears to us to be blue. If the sky is dark, cloudy or overcast, water will turn different shades of gray, green, brown or even black. In the rather dramatic sunset over St. Kitts in the Caribbean, the water surface has a mixed gold and magenta cast. Often, we try to remove magenta color casts from images. But to do so here would really defeat the spirit of this image.
Celebrity Apex Sunset St. Kitts, West Indies [Copyright Andy Richards 2024 All Rights Reserved]ONE LAST water-related subject remains: Snow. Ironically, I lived in Michigan and Vermont for most of my adult life, but never really got many snow images, so my winter portfolio is weak. I do have a couple. I have a friend who is a talented photographer. He comes from the film days, when you kind of took what the film gave you. In the past several months, he has posted a few very nicely composed snow scenes. But – perhaps because I am sensitive to it – I immediately noticed a very strong color cast on some of them. The most common casts I see in snow scenes are blue (generally produced by shadows and low light conditions) and red/magenta (which is a factor of the kind of light that often shows up at the “golden” hours of early and late day. If you are cognizant, and have some context, the casts can be quite jarring. The same principles as discussed above will stand you in good stead when color-correcting snow images. Carefully desaturating the snowy portions of the image, with some subtle contrast and brightness adjustments will usually do the trick. Be careful not to overdo it and make the snow seem dirty. Also, be aware of white buildings, and very contrasty, bright colored buildings. You may need to do some additional work to make them blend in properly. But it will be worth the effort.
Iroquois Lighthouse Pt. Iroquois, Lake Superior Michigan U.P. [Copyright Andy Richards 2005 All Rights Reserved]COLOR CASTS in snow – especially blue – are tricky. Again, the eye fools us. Our eye/brain connection is the most advanced processing engine that exists. It takes our thousands of memories, along with our innate knowledge of natural colors, and tells our eye that the snow we are looking at is white. Digital sensors don’t do that (unless we tell them to – see, for example, my “white balance” discussion below). When an image is recorded in its “raw” pixel format, it captures the colors it sees. In the Point Iroquis Lighthouse image, the dominant color in the photograph is blue. Ironically, probably 75 percent of the frame is (should be) white. The relatively low-angled, pure-blue, morning sky creates deep shadows, and those shadows pick of the predominant blue color in the image (interestingly the off-white color of the lighthouse is well enough lit that it pretty much looks white. But the snow? Looking at the comparison shot, its blue. Not much doubt when we have context.
Point Iroquois Lighthouse Michigan U.P. Comparison of Snow [Copyright Andy Richards 2005 All Rights Reserved]SOME MIGHT say I am missing the proverbial boat, here and that all of this is a matter of getting the correct white balance. They wouldn’t be wrong, but I never do that in-camera. You definitely need to pay attention to white balance. To me, that is for shooting in jpeg, tiff or some other “pre-cooked” file type. I never do. I always shoot in raw, and in raw, I can (and sometimes – but rarely – do) correct white balance type issues in post-processing. The next time you photograph a scene that has water, fog, clouds, or even snow, think about whether the color you see on your display is truly the appropriate color for water and water-related images. Don’t be afraid to play around a bit with the saturation and contrast, as – without comparative context – our eyes can fool us.
[Clicking into the individual images here – they will open in a separate page – will give you a much truer and more dramatic illustration and I encourage you to do that]
Bogie Mountain Farm Barnett, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2021 All Rights Reserved]
“Sometimes when you lose your way in the fog, you end up in a beautiful place ….”
(Turkish Playwright Mehmet Ildan)
FOG IS a wonderful atmospheric element for landscape images. It can also be vexing sometimes. On my 2021 trip to Vermont in October, every morning began with heavy (think “pea soup”) fog. There are some shots – usually “long view” landscape images, that can be so obscured by fog that they are essentially impossible. We stood for almost 2 hours in a couple different locations, in the Peacham/Barnet area of Vermont’s “Northeast Kingdom” (NEK) – after having driven an hour or so in the darkness of pre-dawn, waiting for the fog to lift. It didn’t. Not that morning. But perseverance sometimes pays off. The next day I was heading toward Southern Vermont for the final couple days of my trip and had a morning destination in mind. But at the last minute, I called an audible, and was again at the Barnet location for Bogie Mountain Farm around sunrise. I waited again. This time, the fog lifted. I have made other images of this scene with the colorful foliage-covered mountains in the background. But this one – with the fog lifting and the cattle in the field nicely lit by warm, morning sunlight, may the best of the week.
Bogie Mountain Farm A “clearer” view Barnett, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2023 All Rights Reserved]WHEN HEAVY fog is present, obscuring the grand landscapes, we often head for more intimate locations, like ponds. One morning on that same trip in 2021, knowing we were socked in with fog and would not see a sunrise, we headed to a pond my friend Carol was very familiar with, just minutes from our rented VRBO. I made a few pictures that I really liked. With the absence of strong, directional sunlight, and the calm, but cool morning, we were able to record intense colors in the foliage, surrounded by fog, and balanced out by reflections in the glass-like pond surface. But my favorite (and easily making my all-time favorite list) was the shot below, where I zoomed in tight on the rocks in the foreground that were shrouded in the fog. The “foliage” in the “background” is a reflection off the pond surface (this one has an almost metallic look to it, and one of these days, I will try having it printed on metal).
Fall Reflection Northeast Kingdom, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2021 All Rights Reserved]
ONCE HAVING experienced its magical qualities, most photographers have learned to embrace fog, in spite of its occasionally frustrating qualities. More often than not, fog provides added interest – even drama – to images that may be otherwise nice by themselves but take on an ethereal quality when fog is added. We often go to bed the night before a planned shoot, hoping for clear skies and cold weather, especially following rainy conditions. These are the ingredients that produce fog. And we especially like to see low, ground fog (or perhaps better described for the next series of images: “pond fog”). 🙂 I like the suggestion of fog lifting instead of all-over heavy fog. When including fog in your photos (why wouldn’t you?), some care must be taken in post processing. Fog is nothing more than a cloud. Clouds are water. Water is white. But more than any other subject, water takes on color casts from its surroundings. As good as our modern digital camera sensors are, they still often do not discriminate. Our eye/brain combination compensates for those color casts in our real-time viewing of the scene. But the camera captures what it sees without such compensation (unless, of course, you have set it up that way in the camera – in my view that would only apply to jpegs and the rare tiff – and I think that is a poor way to use the amazing equipment most of us carry – As I preach here, I think you should record all your images in raw format). Wide water surfaces often record as blue, which stands to reason, as water is also a reflective medium. In this case, it is generally reflecting the sky. And that is o.k. It is what we expect to see. Indeed, I sometimes shoot the water just for its reflections. But in the case of fog, we normally want it to look its natural white (or near white). The same holds true with most waterfall images. Consequently, I find myself correcting color casts in fog and in waterfalls most of the time in post-processing. But not always. Note, for example, that in the image (Mocassin Lake) below, there is a pink color cast in the fog. I purposely chose to leave it as recorded. The color is what the early morning sunrise painted the scene as, and I wanted to show that.
Mocassin Lake Hiawatha National Forest Munising, Michigan [Copyright Andy Richards 2012]FALL WEATHER, with its cool temperatures, lower humidity, and often clear skies, seems to produce more than its share of fog. And since I have spent much of my time on “field trips” to fall foliage destinations, it doesn’t come as a total surprise that a lot of my fog images are set in fall conditions. Living in Michigan for many years placed me close to the Michigan Upper Peninsula (“U.P”), which in my opinion competes with New England for spectacular fall foliage, mixed in with wonderful landscape. Being only about 3 1/2 hours from the center of the best foliage in the state, Munising, Michigan, I made a number of trips up there during foliage season. Moccasin Lake is really a small pond right on the (Hiawatha) National Forest Highway south out of Munising. There are a number of very photogenic ponds in that area. Most are “off the beaten path.” I have been back to many of them and made some really great foliage images and reflections. But my two best fog images were made on ponds visible from, and just off the main road. In 2012, James Moore, a talented professional landscape photographer and teacher from West Virginia made his first (and sadly only) trip to the U.P. to lead a small group of photographers on a week-long workshop. He did me the great honor of asking me to be his local guide. This was an amazing week for me with many memories. It is perhaps the first and only time I ever experienced the procession from very early developing foliage, to peak, during a week in virtually the same spot. One of my morning chosen spots – for a number of reasons – was Moccasin Lake in the Hiawatha National Forest. It was close to our lodging and close to parking, which was convenient. And I knew it would produce nice early morning shooting. Moccasin has a very small parking area, with log stairs down to the shoreline. I had seen the deadfall in the foreground a day or two earlier, and with a little “compass” work, determined that I could use it in my composition. It was cold enough to freeze my fingers on this morning. But we arrived just at twilight, set up and caught the warm (ironically) morning sun on the foliage across the pond. The fog was a bonus.
Pete’s Lake Hiawatha National Forest Munising, Michigan [Copyright Andy Richards 2012 All Rights Reserved]PETE’S LAKE was a second sunrise destination I chose for the Moore Workshop. I made the shot above mainly for the moonset, but the subtle early morning fog on the water aids in the transition from foliage to reflection. Pete’s Lake is a nearly 200-acre lake; much larger than most of the ponds in the forest. It was unusual for the water to be this flat at any time of the day. But sometimes, as in this image, and the early morning image of Oxbow Bend in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, just a very small amount of fog can still create mood and feel in an image. The Oxbow Bend shot was also one of my first “lessons” in color casts and how to correct them in post-processing. The original, out-of-camera image showed the fog as unnaturally blue. It looked almost contrived (“photoshopped”?). Toning down the color cast makes the fog much less obvious – more subtle – but also more natural in my estimation. While the subject is beyond the scope of this post, stayed tuned for a post dedicated to “fixing” water images.
Oxbow Bend; Snake River Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming [Copyright Andy Richards 2012 All Rights Reserved]PERHAPS MY first Vermont Pond encounter with memorable fog was probably in 2010. I had made fall trips to Vermont in 2005 and 2006, and in the meantime, had begun to write my book on Photographing Vermont’s Iconic Fall Foliage in the ensuing years (first a pdf publication, then two editions of eBook, before reverting to the current pdf, available on the linked page). That process involved my “e-meeting” (is that a thing? If not, maybe I just made it a “thing”) 🙂 of Carol Smith, co-author of the book. I have always had the good fortune of having a place to stay in Vermont, at my cousin’s farm in Bakersfield. But often my shooting locations were a distance from there, and this time, Carol graciously invited me to join her and her husband and stay at their NEK vacation home for a couple days. Of course, the bonus was that she would act as photographer-guide for that time-period. The northeast had endured nearly a week of torrential rainfall the week before I arrived. Driving in from Canada and then upstate New York, the conditions appeared to be very lush, and the water high and running everywhere. And the forecast for the week to follow was cooler and mostly clear and sunny days. Ideal fall weather. The first morning may have been the most fruitful morning of all my visits to Vermont, including my own personal favorite Vermont farmstead image. But for twilight and sunrise, Carol took us (our friend Al was also with us) to the diminutive, Bean Pond along the highway just south of her adopted Vermont town of Barton. The very cold night and morning following wet conditions yielded dramatic low hanging fog over the pond as the sunrise broke through very colorful cloud formations above. Behind the fog the colorful foliage just began to peek through. Shots like these are why we hope for cold, partly clear, but foggy mornings.
Bean Pond Barton, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2010 All Rights ReservedTHAT FAVORITE farm scene was produced just a few minutes after the Bean Pond shots were made, and though the sun was fully up by then, we still have a nice, warm, angled morning light illuminating the scene. But more remarkably, the cold, wet air of the morning also produced a low hanging cloud (yep, clouds and fog are really one and the same), behind our already colorful scene and in front of the colorful, foliage-laden mountainside to our northwest. My “lesson” in color cast issues stood me in very good stead on this picture. The out-of-camera result revealed the fog as a dark, almost gloomy, purplish grey. Knowing that fog consists of miniscule water droplets, and that water is really somewhere between blue and white (actually clear), I color-corrected the fog/cloud bank, rendering it the white I “saw” with my eyes that morning. To my way of thinking, all the elements of a great photograph came together that morning, and the shot remains my personal favorite. As we planned the morning the evening before, Carol had promised me a scene that I would love. It turned out not to be Bean Pond, but she insisted (for good reason) that we start there. But the farm scene? Near perfection. Thank you Carol!
Farm in Irasburg, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2010 All Rights Reserved]SOMETIMES A less dense, but perhaps gloomier fog suggests mood. Our passage into Stockholm, Sweden from the Baltic Sea on our 2022 Celebrity Apex cruise suggested a potential for some pretty scenic landscape images to be made from the high deck of our cruise ship. Most of the journey, however, was characterized by mostly drizzly, gloomy conditions. I wouldn’t have deemed the shot of the red cabins on the shore worth processing, but for the gloomy, misty fog, which I felt gave the shot “mood.”
Stockholm Passage Stockholm, Sweden [Copyright Andy Richards 2023 All Rights Reserved]THE SAME is true, I think, for the shot of small, French village of La Verdon-sur-Mer, France, shot from our cruise berth in 2021. I am not sure that without the mysterious shroud of fog, I would have even made this photo. But for me, the fog made it photo-worthy.
La Verdon-sur-Mer, France [Copyright Andy Richards 2021 All Rights Reserved]SOMETIMES LOW lying fog, seen from elevation, can be dramatic, as in the shot from the scenic overlook in Babcock State Park.
Scenic Overlook Babcock State Park, West Virginia [Copyright Andy Richards 2011 All Rights Reserved]IN OTHER instances, fog nearly totally obscuring a part of the image in a low valley can be dramatic, like the shot of the early morning fog from high up on the Foothills Parkway, in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in Tennessee.
Foothills Parkway Great Smoky Mountains National Park Townsend, Tennessee [Copyright Andy Richards 2023 All Rights Reserved]FOG THAT is almost, but not completely, obscuring your subject can also be effective as an image. In January of 2023, we traveled to South Africa. For the first three days of our trip, we stayed in the Table Bay Hotel overlooking Table Bay in Cape Town. We not only had an impressive view down to the harbor, but a nothing less than spectacular view of the famous and iconic Table Mountain. But only when it wasn’t obscured by heavy fog/cloud cover. We were there during a rainy few days, and it seemed like that cloud bank was a permanent fixture. We did see some peeks, however, of brilliance poking through.
Table Bay Waterfront View from the Table Bay Hotel Cape Town, South Africa [Copyright Andy Richards 2023 All Rights Reserved]THE TABLE Bay image above also brings another phenomena of fog (and clouds) to light. Something that I call a “breakthrough” image or scene. I have noted here that – in keeping with my “namesake” Blog and website: “LightCentricPhotography,” photography is really about “light.” Nothing gets the photographic “juices” running like dramatic light. And there is nothing more dramatic than brilliant sunrays breaking through a bank of fog. I have several examples.
Bean Pond Barton, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2010 All Rights Reserved]Sunrise in Cade’s Cove Great Smoky Mountains National Park Townsend, Tennessee [Copyright Andy Richards 2023 All Rights Reserved]IT BEARS repeating. It is all about the light! The Foothills Parkway image of the sunrise is perhaps otherwise another “ho-hum” sunrise without the rays of sun cutting through and combining with the fog. That, in my book, “makes” the image.
Foothills Parkway Sunrise Great Smoky Mountains National Park Townsend, Tennessee [Copyright Andy Richards 2023 All Rights Reserved]BACK IN 2021, I had the good fortune to photograph yet another spot scouted and suggested by Carol Smith. Turtle Pond (often misnamed Marshfield Pond), a small, obscure pond in Marshfield, Vermont, was a place I had seen photographed by Carol and a few others. Frankly, I had been previously underwhelmed by what I saw as photographs. But Carol has a pretty good photographer’s eye, and she was so high on it, that I agreed to go there for sunrise one morning. Well over an hour’s drive from our “headquarters” in Burke that year, we had a very early start to arrive pre-dawn. The pond, at first blush, is kind of a scrubby little pond that seems and feels like nothing more than a wetland or marsh. But looks can be deceptive. My first inkling might have been when we drove up to the base of the pond and the small parking area was jammed full. So was almost every other option along the road. I found parking, but quite a way on up the road, with a hike back to the site. The second clue was the fact that it was standing room only for photographers waiting on the sunrise. Hmnn. True to the rest of the week, this turned out to be another mostly foggy morning. But as the sun did gradually eek its way through the fog, the scene opened up and once you framed up a composition in your viewfinder, and blotted out any surroundings, the magic of the shot came forth. I have a shot from here that I like much better – made after most of the fog had cleared – this shot shows how well-placed fog can enhance an image that may have only been marginal without it – in my view.
Foggy Morning on Turtle Pond Marshfield, Vermont [Copyright Andy Richards 2021]FOG CAN also completely dominate and change the character and color of light. In May 2023, we cruised in the North Sea. This shot of the world’s largest offshore wind farm, just outside of Liverpool, England was impressive enough by itself. But in the sunset, with a heavy dose of fog, the entire scene is rendered in a pale grey, pink-tinted light that I think is pretty dramatic. This is similar to what photographers might call a “high-key” exposure.
Offshore Wind Farm Liverpool, England [Copyright Andy Richards 2023 All Rights Reserved]AS I noted earlier, fog and clouds, of course are one and the same. Whether it is a cloud or fog depends on your vantage point. When they are high above you and your subject, they are easy to call clouds. When they are below or in front of the subject, fog seems a more appropriate description. But sometimes that distinction isn’t so clear. In the Montserrat image below, is what makes the image interesting and dramatic a cloud? Or is it fog? or does it even really matter?
Montserrat Barcelona, Spain [Copyright Andy Richards 2023]IF, AS a photographer, you haven’t embraced, appreciated, shot, and even sought out fog, you may well be missing one of the best and most dramatic approaches to your craft. If you haven’t – try it!
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