Kat Eye Studio

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Share Your View: Fog

Yesterday I took my camera and spent time noticing the details of Parco di Monza as fog hid the greater world. I saw new things, like the moss and roots of this tree, because I was looking closer. I almost felt done with the fog this year, but I reviewed my images from yesterday’s photowalk and I’ve fallen in love with fog all over again.

Have you seen fog this last week? Did you find a favorite fog photo in your archives? It’s not too late to share your view! Even though I opened the linky in last week’s Exploring with a Camera post on Fog, you can still link up for another week. Come by the blog to see who’s already joined in. Visit some of these sites, there are some wonderful and creative fog photos included already.

Don’t forget there’s a giveaway of postcards too – I’ll draw a winner from those who link up. One lucky person will win a set of my Black and White postcards this week! I can’t wait to find out who it will be.

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And this time, with Color

As I go through teaching Find Your Eye, I am following my students in their assessments of their eye and rediscovering mine all over again. It’s been a wonderful experience. I’ve been able to define my style even further, to state that my best images have an element of line, color or texture. Yesterday’s images were about line, devoid of color. Today I’ll show you more of the dance center Kirstin took me to – the inside is all about line and color together! 
Such wonderful, bright colors, green and pinks together. Lockers of green, walls of pink. Hallways of green. Everything bright, cheery and open. Can I come study here?
I even played around with bokeh lines. How’s that for some influence from my muses? 
Even wavy lines to catch my eye! There is a companion photo to this one, of me, floating around on Kirstin’s memory card. 
Thanks again Kirstin! I hope you all enjoy this little bit of summer color today. I’m off to photograph some more fog this morning in the park. 

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Reflecting Inspiration

Do you know how much fun it is, to meet up with someone who has the same passion as you? It’s amazing and exhilarating. We had a great weekend with my fellow muse Kirstin and her family in London. It’s funny, I took fewer pictures than normal, but it was a creative boost just to be around Kirstin with her enthusiasm, love of photography, warm personality and great sense of humor.

On Saturday, Kirstin took me with her to the dance center where her kids have lessons. She thought I would love the building – and she was right! It was great fun to wander the building for an hour seeking out interesting images. We discovered some new things, like this repeating reflection at the exit shown above. (Many thanks to Kirstin for “modeling” for me – that’s her in the image.)

We also found this fabulous ramp, a little nook Kirstin had never seen before. She thought her son would love it, so we brought him back after the lesson to show him. That’s when Kirstin discovered the fabulous light, and set up to take a few portraits. I had fun capturing the moment as well, with the dramatic contrast of light and dark.

Here is Kirstin’s image of her son from that mini session, isn’t it fabulous?
The boy

I love that we can share this image from two points of view – Kirstin’s and mine. I love that we both discovered something new, in that one hour together at the dance center, even though she goes there every week. Inspiring things happen when you get people with a shared passion together, reflecting that energy back and forth. Don’t you agree?

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Altering our View

I am musing today on Applied Texture over at Mortal Muses, come by and say hello. This image was captured on our day trip to Sirmione last weekend, and I just loved the piece of the castle jutting out into the lake. Beautiful light and reflections, a reminder of an era gone by. Perfect for a little texture to age it.

I love digital photography, for the way it can alter our view. Here’s the original image, before the texture. A different feel, don’t you agree? Which do you like best?

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London Bound

We head out today for a weekend trip to London, to visit my wonderful muse friend Kirstin and hopefully meet some of you at our photowalk on Sunday.

It’s so amazing to me, to find I now have friends all over the world because of my blog. I hope that I get to meet some of you on my future travels!  Drop me a note via email if you are in any of these places we’ll be visiting in the next few months, I would love to meet up:
Sicily, Italy
Santorini and Athens, Greece
Prague
Oslo, Norway
If you are anywhere around northern Italy, let me know too. A day trip is always fantastic!

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to capture some fog with your camera if it shows up near you.

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Exploring with a Camera: Fog

Winter brings fog, one of the most wonderful weather patterns for photography. I know I’ve said it before here on the blog, but I love fog!  Because you can only see what is right in front of you, there is a delicious sense of mystery, of things slowly revealed.

Fog forms when there is high humidity along with a temperature that is very close to the dew point, it is essentially a low lying clound. You can read more about the science of fog here. It will form readily near bodies of water, like lakes and rivers, and in cooler temperatures. That’s why you often find fog early in the morning, dissipating as the weather warms up.

I’ve had the good luck to live two places now where fog is common: Oregon and northern Italy. It forms frequently here at my house in Italy, since we are right near the large Parco di Monza through which the Lambro River runs. A large, natural open space is a great source of fog – temperatures are always cooler in the park and the moisture is abundant from the landscape.

How can you use fog as an element in your photography? Here are a few ideas…

Fog provides a great backdrop, to capture a single element. A distracting background can be completely hidden in the fog. I use this feature to capture silhouettes, like the lead-in image of the post and this image below. The detail is highlighted by the blank backdrop. I also converted both of these to black and white, to heighten the contrast. One thing to be careful of with fog is underexposure, because the light white background will dominate your camera’s meter readings. Play around with overexposing your images just a little bit to compensate.

As you move closer to a object, fog slowly reveals. Vary your distance to a subject to create a different effect and feel in your images. The two images below are of the same tree on the same day, but taken at different distances. The first one,  farther away from the camera, creates that sense of mystery I was talking about earlier.

For both of these images, I again converted to black and white to heighten the contrast. Fog desaturates colors and your images can look almost black and white straight out of the camera, but converting to black and white can keep the focus on the shapes and tones rather than what little color remains.
You can use fog to get a sense of depth in your photo. While photographers often manipulate the depth of field through aperture, you can also create depth using the atmosphere. Fog creates depth by successively lightening the objects in the background as you move away from the foreground. You can see this effect in the image of the trees below.
Light fog can give a subtle effect, as in the next example. Along with placement, focus and color, the sense of the largest tree as the focal point is enhanced by the fading trees behind.
Heavy fog can make depth obvious, even at short distances. This image of a tree shows the effect of a heavy fog, the back of the tree already fading significantly compared to the front.
All of these examples so far are from farther away, what happens when you get up close? You can see condensation on the surfaces. Get in close to see what I call “beads of fog” on the smaller objects around you.
I’ve talked about what is revealed as you move through the fog, but also consider what is revealed as the fog is lifting. This image, taken looking up through the fog, shows the blue sky peeking through as the fog is burned away by the sun.

In this image, you can see how interesting it can be to capture the sun through the fog. This was an unusual day, because the fog seemed to be disappearing from the bottom up rather than the top down.

Finally, don’t forget about capturing the world in fog at night. You know I love night! Fog seems to amplify the artificial lights of night, creating a warm glow that is unlike any other night effect. I did no color or exposure correction on these, I liked them as they came out of the camera.

I know many of us are anxiously awaiting summer for the warmth and light of the sun. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have right now, take a moment to celebrate fog, one of the delightful gifts of winter.

Today I am going to try something different! As a welcome to the participants in the Scavenger Hunt from Ashley Sisk’s Ramblings and Photos, I’m going to open the linky today and keep it open for two weeks. (If you are in a blog reader, come over to the blog to see the link tool.) I’ll still post the linky next Thursday for Share Your View as usual, if you want some time to capture the fog or look through your archive.

In addition, I’m going to give away a set of my Black and White postcards by random drawing to one person who links in a fog photo. I haven’t given away a set of these yet on my blog, and since this set includes the foggy tree image it is the perfect time to give these away.

Thanks for sticking with me! Good luck with your fog photos, I look forward to seeing what you capture. You can find the code to copy and paste the Exploring with a Camera button on your blog here.