Shooting On Foggy Days? Find Your Scene Then Find A Colorful Foreground

Posted on March 15, 2014

Spring Color, Soberanes Point and Arch, Garapatta State Park, Big Sur Coast
Canon 5DMKIII, 22mm, f/22, 1 second, 100 ISO, Singh Ray Thin LB Polarizer

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I love spring along the coast of Big Sur. We are in the transition time of year when the fog season is gradually starting its return with the help of rising temps in the central valley and the warmer air aloft passing over the relatively cold waters of the central Pacific Ocean. Too many factors are involved to predict exactly when and where fog will form, but when it does, I immediately seek out color to add to the mono-toned diffused light.

But this is not a blog about shooting in the fog; instead, this is about finding foregrounds to both enliven and add depth to your foggy day scenes.

Seems ironic that I am writing this blog while sitting in a Sun City, Arizona Starbucks. Don’t believe me? Well, I almost saw an older woman on a 3-wheel bike get wiped-out by an older gentleman a bit out-of-control in his golf cart. Hey, I can’t make this stuff up 🙂 Fortunately everyone is alright!

I’m in Arizona with Gary Hart to watch our beloved San Francisco Giants play some Spring Training baseball before the start of my Northern Arizona Workshop tomorrow (we start at the Grand Canyon and end in Sedona next Tuesday).

I was going through some images for the workshop when I came across these two. The lead image of Soberanes Arch shows just how colorful the headlands along the Big Sur Coast can get at this time of year. This foreground is a mix of flowering ice plant (non-native and evasive, but very photogenic), mixed with sea daisies. In the winter, this patch is rather dormant.

The arch is really the subject of the image, but as nice as it looked, under mono-toned conditions like fog (and clouds), I always challenge myself to find something colorful. In honesty, I didn’t have to go far to find this spot. If you have taken one of my Big Sur workshops, you will immediately recognize the location.

Flowering Ice Plant, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park – McWay Fall, Big Sur Coast
Canon 1DMKIII, 35mm, f/22, 3 second timed-exposure, 200 ISO

In this image that I captured at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, I decided to relegate the 80-foot freshwater McWay Fall to a background element; instead, letting the gorgeous flowering ice plant take center stage.

This image was made about 15 minutes after sunset. The wind had completely died away (as is often the case once the sun disappears) and I could use a 3-second exposure and f/22 for extreme depth-of-field to make this image work. Any wind would have blurred the flowers and ruined the image.

Again, with the light subdued and mono-toned, I found a colorful foreground.

The other point is that if you find a great background, find a foreground to go with it; conversely, if you find an awesome foreground, find a background to match. Don’t think one without the other.

Challenging yourself to think this way will add the extra benefit of creating the illusion of depth in your images. I talked about this in my blog on Point of View and Perspective.

Well, the crack-of-the-bat is calling. It’s springtime – a great time of year!

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