Fog Dune
The year 2013, for my photography, was a fairly slow year. Although I came home with many great images Mama Nature was out to get me way too often. The previous evening I walked out of work an hour after sunset and saw the sky *still* ablaze with color. It looked like Mama Nature was out to get me again. The next day, this day, the clouds looked to be sticking around and I had no intentions of missing out.
Willie and I left work and drove up to the SF Coast with the intentions of photographing the Sutro Baths. In typical 2013 fashion, Mama Nature was out to get us and fog began to roll in almost as soon as we got there. Guess we weren’t going to shoot the coast. Our only option was to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and hope the fog stayed low and continued to fill in. The heat of the sun kept the fog away from the Golden Gate Bridge and we, once again, had to abandon our plan and try something else. We hiked over a small hill to see what the fog looked like on the Pacific Ocean side of the coast and were greeted with a stunning layer of fog. Without any interesting foreground elements on this side of the Marin Headlands Willie quickly suggested using the telephoto lens to get some intimate fog shots.
One area of fog that peaked my interest was a bowl-like section of fog that was creating sand-dunes of fog. The rolling hills of fog were stunning to look at. I tried a number of compositions and ultimately decided I liked leaving some room on the right for the lines of fog to let the eye flow. I also knew that I wanted to smooth out the fog ... I threw the Lee Big Stopper on and increased my shutter speeds to 20 seconds. What do you think, a neat patch of fog?
Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D ED:
145mm, f/11, 20 sec, ISO 100