MIST OPPORTUNITIES

James Paterson shows you how to use mist and fog to create striking landscapes

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Whether it's a dense pea-souper or an ethereal morning mist the magical thing about fog is how it can completely transform even the most mundane scene into something stunning. There are two main ways in which it does this.

First, it's about the atmosphere - fog creates a mood all of its own. In visual terms, it diffuses the light and mutes the colours, but on an emotional level it suggests calmness, serenity or mystery, and it allows you to create landscape photos that evoke those feelings.

The second reason is purely visual: mist and fog creates separation. As the scene recedes, the distant elements fade out to grey, and this offers an opportunity not to be missed, as you can compose in a completely new way.

A scene that, at other times, might be dismissed as too busy or cluttered may become starkly simple when the mist descends. A tall building fades out into oblivion, a row of trees stands out from the foggy forest, a shrouded hilltop resembles an island, a person becomes a ghostly silhouette.

But how can we predict when fog is going to occur? What are the optimum conditions, where are we most likely to find it, and what are the best camera techniques for capturing it? Figuring all this out involves a bit of amateur meteorology, but thankfully there are lots of resources availalbe that can help. Over the next few pages we'll show you how you can predict, prepare for, and capture stunning foggy photos.

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1 WHAT IS FOG?