Fog is what … besides being “a thick cloud of tiny water droplets suspended in the atmosphere at or near the earth’s surface that obscures or restricts visibility” or “something that obscures and confuses a situation or someone’s thought processes,” a great landscape asset! Fog adds mystery and suspense to our photographs that taps the imagination. Whenever your photograph taps the viewer’s imagination, you win! Fog can also bring a feeling of disaster or death, a cold emotion hard to shake. One thing about fog you can’t escape is that everyone has experienced it so they have a relationship to it. So in our photographs can we use those emotions and experiences with fog to intensify the power of fog when there really isn’t that much fog?
Many turn to something in the digital darkroom like the Fog filter in Luminar to bring “fog” to their photograph. I’ve done that and it works really, really well. But as you know I like to do things in camera whenever I can and this is no exception. What else do we have in our camera bag that can create “something that obscures and confuses a situation or someone’s thought processes“? How about a very shallow DoF? Shooting these images of f1.4 just adds to the mystery of the fog with a limited plane of focus. It’s a really simple technique you might try out next time. Works pretty darn well!