fog

Articles Tagged with: fog

This past weekend, my family traveled up to the border of SC and NC to do some work on the in-law’s home and to celebrate her birthday. Since her home was going to be a work zone, we opted not to sleep at my mother-in-law’s house and rented a home in Landrum, SC for the duration.

On Sunday morning, after a long weekend of peeling wallpaper, spackling, laying tile, grouting, masking, priming, and painting, I woke up to a wonderfully thick fog. I decided to throw on my sweatshirt and shoes and take a walk down the road with my camera.

Fog makes for some fantastic landscape opportunities. It’s almost too good, because it eliminates so much and allows you to focus on your subjects clearly, which is ironic because nothing is optically clear in the fog.

I guess the best word to explain what I mean is isolation. You can focus your mind’s eye on an object when everything else is out of focus and easily isolate it.

It’s kind of like nature’s bokeh. I also found it very stimulating. I hadn’t even had my morning coffee yet, but I was full of life by the time I walked to the end of the dirt road leading up to the main road. At that point, the creative juices were flowing and the most ordinary things became extraordinary.

The processing on the photos above were all done in Snapseed on the Mac. It’s a great program for making gritty photos, which adds to the mood of my early morning adventure.

After breakfast, the kids & I did some exploring on the property of the rental home. My daughter found a little guest house that was very much geared for youngsters. It had a loft with a bunch of mattresses that were screaming for kids to play on.

My son found a tree swing, which he made quick use of…

And in the garage that was converted into a workshop, I found this:

A fully equipped darkroom! It was truly awesome – the owner of this house has everything you need to develop film. He also has studio space, which was more like storage space while I was there. Regardless, I took the opportunity to shoot some of the elements, including this:

The next time I complain about the cost of a lens, I’ll look at the pictures of this setup and realize just how expensive photography used to be monetarily as well as time-wise. It makes you think about how different the developing process is now for photos. Before, you would lock yourself away in a room for hours just dodging and burning away, completely in the creative zone – much like my walk in the fog, but with chemicals! I have a lot of respect for the dedication and work that went into this craft before this industrial age of digital.

In other news, I received my new lens and I can’t wait to try it out in a few professional scenarios – so far, it’s only been used to shoot my pets, which is never a bad thing really 😉

Tugaloo State Park

I just wanted to share a few of my favorite shots from this past Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I spent it with family at Tugaloo State Park in Lavonia, GA, which is on Lake Hartwell (link opens up right on the cabins we stayed in).

Due to a drought, the shore of the lake was quite receded, which made for some cool photo opportunities. The photo above is taken from the receded shores of the lake and you can see where the water level used to be – all of the docks are sitting on the dried up lake bed. You’ll want to view it bigger to see the scale of the shot with my son playing with his toy sword in the bottom corner.

In the early morning fog, I was able to isolate these branches against a foggy sky in the photo above. It was so thick on the lake that visibility was a real issue. I’m not sure how it happened, but one inlet was filled with tree stumps. As the sun rose and the fog lifted, I was able to get some shots like this:

The sky was so clear at night that you could see the Milky Way above the water. I made this shot by painting the barren tree branches above with an LED flashlight:

Here’s a young boy fishing in the lake. I don’t think the fishing at the shore was very good, but I did see a guy out in a Jon Boat capture a pretty sizable looking fish.

We took a day trip out to Helen, GA and passed by the Nacoochee Indian Mound where it is said that a ceremonial Cherokee sacred fire burned unceasingly.

I have a ton of photos over on Flickr (mostly of the family variety). I just wanted to share some of my faves from the trip. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!