Think of winter weather and icicles and freshly fallen snow may be the first things that come to mind. But for me, it also means fog.
Cold, clear nights can often be followed by spectacular foggy sunrises. At first light, fog can rise off the surface of a lake. And it can vanish within minutes of the sun clearing the horizon.
I’ve lived my entire life in a state that’s home to five volcanoes. The word “mountain” has meant to me a permanently snow-capped peak that often reaches into the clouds.
Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains are nothing like that, but they are inspiring nonetheless — maybe more inspiring if you count the number of times they’ve been featured in songs. I can’t think of them without hearing John Denver singing about them, but Take Me Home, Country Roads is just one of dozens of songs in which they’re featured.
I realize it was only a couple months ago that I wrote about photographing frozen waterfalls without actually showing the waterfall in the image. Shortly after I posted that, Washington state was hit with another week-long deep freeze, and I got the opportunity to create images like that again.
I've always been a little envious of painters. If you're trying to capture a scene and the clouds aren't quite right, a painter can just make them right. Photographers have to make do with what nature provides — at least at that moment. As one grows as a nature photographer, however, the act of creating an image becomes more like creating a painting. And I'm not talking about the use of Photoshop.
Photography does involve being in the right place at the right time, but that doesn't mean it's always entirely left up to chance.
Blue skies are fine for travel brochures, but my favorite landscape images have an element of drama. And they're captured at what I call the edge of a storm.
Someone who knows I'm a nature photographer, but isn't one himself, recently asked me what I do on cloudy days.
"On a day like today," he said, gesturing out a window toward the gray sky, "what would you photograph? Anything?"
It's a gray day in Seattle, just like yesterday, the day before, and the week before that. It's the end of May, and I've been able to barbeque only twice so far this year. And one of those times was in the rain.
So what does this have to do with nature photography? If you only photograph (or barbeque) when the weather is just right, there may be long periods of time when you don't get to do it.
You may have to change your photographic style a bit.
