Fog, Love It

Schoodic Peninsula in the fog.  If you put a recognizable object in the foreground.  It helps set the tone for the photograph.

If you travel to down East Maine, the Oregon, Washington and British Columbia coasts are along the ocean anywhere you can have fog.  A number of people will say fog it.  There is nothing to photograph, but fog can give you very interesting pictures.  In a previous blog, I showed you one way of correcting a foggy picture.  Today, let's discuss how to deal with fog.  Fog does two things, it will make the scene dimly lit and because of all the water vapor in the air, that reflects light it will cause your light meter to read wrong.  You can correct both of these problems by one, increasing your exposure and two, dial in positive exposure compensation. 

Last year, I also wrote a blog on fog.  In that blog, I was talking about utilizing aperture priority, as you mode setting.  In the present blog, I am now utilizing manual settings.  However, the same corrections hold true, you need to dial in positive exposure compensation.  Now you may ask, why did I change from utilizing aperture priority mode to manual mode.  I believe manual mode gives me better control of what I am photographing.  But, a caveat, I still will use aperture priority, and even shutter priority in certain situations.

All the following pictures were taken in manual mode, on a tripod and with a wired shutter release. 

We'll start out with West Quoddy light in the fog.

West Quoddy light in the fog.  There was no exposure compensation, and though the histogram is not bad, there is still room to expose to the right.

West Quoddy light in the fog.  I had change the scene slightly, but the sightings were the same, except I added +1 exposure compensation, and the histogram is exposed more to the right.

This is a picture of the light at top of West Quoddy lighthouse.  I added +1 exposure compensation and noticed a histogram is exposed to the right, without touching the right side.

In this picture of the light of West Quoddy lighthouse, I decreased by exposure compensation to +.5.  The reason for that is that the light was on, and if I did not decrease my exposure compensation.  I would've blown out the light.  If you look at the histogram you can see where the light is and that it is not touching the right side

The final pictures was in heavy fog at the harbor located in Corea, Maine

A dock at the Corea harbor with lobster pots.  This is the picture went out any post-processing in Lightroom.  Notice that the histogram eggs exposed to the right, there is a lot of room on the left, and there is no clipping.

Here is the same picture of the dark in Corea harbor after I post process the picture in Lightroom and in Topaz Clarity and Detail.  Notice the histogram is still exposed to the right but not touching the right side and the histogram is spread out to the left side without touching, so there is more detail in the shadows.  There also is no clipping

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