WHISPERS IN THE FOG

A MANTRA FOR MAKING CLEAN, CLEAR PHOTOGRAPHS

Simplicity. Subtlety. These are words I value in landscape photography. I love making quiet and simple images. I strive to distill aspects of nature that whisper and entice the viewer to delve deeper—into the image and, most importantly, into nature.

A common tendency for landscape photographers is to include too much information: too many mountains or trees, too much foreground or sky. It is a natural and enthusiastic response to a great location or scene. Let’s describe it all! After all, it is the entire 360-degree, multisensory experience of sight, sound, and smell that makes us raise up our cameras. It is difficult to tell the whole story in one frame, so what happens most often is that the resulting image is merely a description. Including too much has the effect of diluting the composition. Had the photographer paused to consider how to create a composition that distills the experience, the viewer might have a chance to sense the place through the photographer’s eyes. To distill is the key idea here: to isolate and concentrate the key elements of the photographer’s interaction with the scene. Through this process of focusing compositionally, the selective process gives one a better opportunity to discover a new viewpoint.

A few years ago, I traveled to Sequoia National Park on an assignment for Sunset magazine. My job was to photograph the sequoia groves in the park, and especially the newly preserved groves south of the park. When I first drove into one grove, a thick fog enveloped the forest. These conditions were not exactly the ideal conditions for the journalistic work at hand. Yet I was entranced. Perhaps I could make an image that would evoke the Sequoia’s timeless and epic qualities in a new way.

I spent the next few hours wandering amongst the dogwood and giant sequoia as the fog sifted through the woods. Slowly and subtly, the fog thickened and lightened on a soft breeze. While I photographed, I played a tape of meditative Japanese flute music, which further intensified the wondrous experience.

What the fog provided me was a forest simplified. The combination of soft light and the reduction of depth and detail provided by the fog allowed me to distill the key elements around me. On a sunny day, I would not have even taken out my camera. I photographed dogwood branches with their blossoms seemingly suspended in air and floating in the fog. With my wide-angle lens I captured two lone sequoias soaring up into the fog, an image that was later used in a Nike ad. I photographed a dogwood tree growing in front of a sequoia. I made vertical and horizontal images in panoramic format. The creative juices were flowing, and I worked the scene until no more ideas would come.

In Blooming Dogwood and Giant Sequoia in the Fog (shown on the previous spread), I chose to frame the delicate dogwood tree in contrast to the massive sequoia. The fog helped to simplify the image and draw attention to the two very different trees.

The fog was gone the next day and the sun came out. I was able to make the type of images needed for the assignment. The magazine did not use any of my photographs made in the fog, but many of them have been subsequently published. It was a successful trip on all quarters, especially artistically for me!

The mantra, once again, is: Simplicity and Subtlety.

Redbud in Fog | Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina | 1991

Lichen-Covered Alder and Boulder | Yosemite National Park, California | 2003