If I’m ever feeling too warm, I look back to Belgians bicycling in the rainy winter and feel the chill set in immediately.
Tag: Fog
Vertical Mechelen
Mechelen, Belgium welcomed the New Year with rain and fog and the strange combination of ancient and modern architecture that characterizes so much of Belgium.
And also a forest of scary trees.
Never So Glad to See Sunrise Over Spanish Mountains
After our redeye flight from Madrid to New York turned around halfway over the Atlantic due to mechanical issues, I’ve never been so happy to see sunrise on dry land.
San Diego Cyberpunk
This view—past tall metal fences, over bright yellow industrial pipes and through palm trees, would fit well in the cyberpunk environs of Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City. Having not been back for several years, I was as entranced as ever by the strange mishmash that constitutes SoCal.
Resilient Dahl/Miyazaki House
The steep-roofed Belgian structure in the distance (now T’ile Maines) is a relaxing venue on a Belgian island in Mechelen, but a foggy winter evening makes it look more like the sorts of charming/mysterious structures that populate the works of Roald Dahl and Hayao Miyazaki.
Travelers Tower at Peak Batman
Neither the neoclassical architecture nor the rain make this a “peak Batman” image—rather, it’s the interplay of spotlights with fog that creates what I would describe as “Batmanitude”.
Weird Fog
A fog of Macbeth/Shakespeare/Weird-Sisters-level strangeness descended on Hartford last night.
Bridge Construction in the Fog
A moment in time, glowing through the fog: lights from the old (now dismantled) and new (still under construction, at the time) eastern spans of the San Francisco—Oakland Bay Bridge.
Shipping Beneath the Marine Layer
Views like this one, capturing the marine layer rolling across the San Francisco Bay towards the Port of Oakland, are the kind that first attracted me to photography. I took this picture nearly four years ago, during my sabbatical to the Bay Area, when I was still shooting with my Nikon D7000 (already antiquated tech in 2017); I can’t want to be able to safely revisit Berkeley’s Grizzly Peak to capture more cityscapes with my new Sony a7R IV.
Pastel Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is so often depicted either in strong primary colors or in classic black and white that a hazy, pastel-hued summer version is a mellow contrast.
Fog
Photo of “For Handel” by Mark di Suvero, located on WWU’s campus.
Industrial Harbor
The orange hue and misty hills remind me of the poster for Apocalypse Now, but this is just the northern end of San Francisco Bay. In this age of upward-climbing property values and Silicon Valley rags-to-riches stories, I’m continually amazed that there’s room for industry. If these facilities had to be started today, I can’t imagine that they’d wind up in the same position.
Marine Layer San Diego
Like many East Coasters, I hadn’t heard of the marine layer until my first visit to the West Coast. The odd, damped mornings in coastal cities seem so at odds with the view of California in popular culture. Even sunny San Diego is matte and dull under a blanket of morning clouds.
In the Mist
On the way back from the Outer Banks, a perfect storm of conditions led to this amazing mist over a Watauga Lake. As the mist lifted this small island came into view like some kind of mini magical realm (or the setting for some kind of horror film).
Edge of the Big Forest
In this particular corner of Connecticut in early spring, the rain and snow combined to make the perfect storybook fog. This image is so quaint and charming, I could swear I’d seen it somewhere before.
But this brings me to another idea: those particular locations in landscape photography so scenic that they are literally ubiquitous. Take the tunnel view in Yosemite, or shots of the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands, or downtown Manhattan as seen from the top of Rockafeller Center as examples: is it even possible to make an original composition from such a photographically saturated place? But these places are also photographically saturated for a reason: they’re really, really pretty. Where does that trade-off between originality and beauty fall?
Decaseconds 