A handful of years ago, I was a student at Iowa State University. I had just started playing with a camera and was inspired by a show on the Weather Channel where a fine art photographer named Peter Lik made landscape photography look like fun. One morning I grabbed a tripod and my camera, got up before sunrise on a chilly morning, and headed to a small pond a few miles north of campus. The weather was terrible! The wind was howling, the light was beginning to show but I could see a thick layer of clouds above me. I grabbed my gear and hiked down to the beach, while fighting the cold wind with nothing but a light sweatshirt.
The reason I am bringing this story up is because of the lesson it taught me.
While I stood there on the beach with no idea what my composition would even look like, I realized that the weather was too bad for photography. I looked towards the East as the thick clouds thundered by and all of a sudden the clouds broke apart and I saw one of the most beautiful sunrises I had ever seen! I snapped a crappy photo of it and ran back to my car with the feeling of accomplishment. On the worst day imaginable, a beautiful sunrise had shown itself long enough to take a photograph.
While the image wasn’t any good due to my lack of technical knowledge, I learned something. Bad weather can make for great photography. Here is a look at that image along with my terrible HDR and photoshop skills.
Here is an example of another cloudy morning after a couple years of practice. I made this one near Cody, Wyoming.
So this leads us to this foggy morning here in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. Since that day on the beach in Iowa, I have experienced many great photographs that came from bad weather situations, but I had yet to photograph the illusive fog. When I saw that fog was being forecast, I set my alarm and went to bed ready for the misty morning to arrive.
As you can see from the vlog, the fog arrived all right.
The lesson here is that when the weather sucks, grab your camera and go make photographs!
Keep on Stimulighting the Night!
Peace!
-Dan McCreight