Foggy Mountain
Sometimes, clarity isn't a virtue.
I’ve always put a lot of effort into photography Mt. Rainier in the best possible weather. I like to show all the details that become visible on a really clear day. This is the opposite of that: a fog-obscured mountain.
I got up early this morning to try to capture the mountain at sunrise. But the fog was really thick. I thought I saw some clearing—and the fog was almost certainly limited to the river valleys. (Never mind that this is the Pacific Northwest and everything is a river valley.)
It’s about a 10 mile drive to this location; the fog was thick and gray the whole way. And it was obvious that my usual spot was still fogged in, though I could also see that the fog was starting to lift in places. I circled around to a higher location, and it was clear there—but no open spot where I could see the mountain because of our very tall trees.
So I went down to my usual spot.
And when I got there, presto! I saw what you see above: a veiled mountain backlit by the rising sun, with plenty of fog obscuring almost everything.
From a technical standpoint, the fog was lifting, but instead of simply dissipating, it was becoming clouds. That’s what you see in the middle distance: rising fog becoming clouds. There was also still ground fog at the elevation I was out, just under 1000 feet.
I grabbed my camera and got the shot above.
And the fog suddenly lifted in seconds, and only the very tip of Mt. Rainier was still visible. Then the newly risen clouds obscured the mountain entirely. That was it! I had two shots that showed a some of the mountain. My exposures weren’t even correct, so I brightened them to match what I saw with my eyes, and the result is what you see above.
Here’s a photo that I processed to show more contrast and detail. I also slightly corrected the colors—the moisture in the fog was splitting the white light into various colors. This evens most of that out.
This is the original photograph:
Afterwards, I amused myself by taking various fog-themed photographs. This one shows how the thicker fog over the Carbon River rose up and became a cloud:
That was the second and third photographs, where I stepped back a bit just before the mountain disappeared completely. I combined those two shots into a mosaic to get a more inclusive view of the scene.
Shot with my new Fujifilm GFX 100S II camera, and a classic lens: the Contax 645 80mm f/2.