(“A Photograph Exposed” is a series exploring some of my photographs in greater detail.)
San Francisco Skyline, Winter Fog and Haze. San Francisco, California. December 18, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Fog and haze obscure the winter skyline of downtown San Francisco, California.
It is unlikely that any view of San Francisco will be entirely unique, but I haven’t seen many other photographs of the City’s skyline that look quite like this one. It isn’t unusual for people who see the photograph (especially as a print) to ask, “Is that real?” It is as real as a photograph gets, and the conditions actually occurred — the only time I have seen them quite like this, with quite this soft and subtle atmosphere and light. (The post-processing on this photograph was relatively minimal, and a lot of it was about controlling the brightness of that bright cloud high in the sky.)
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I frequently drive north over the Golden Gate Bridge to photograph in the redwoods, along the coast, or at Point Reyes National Seashore. This usually means leaving home well before the sun rises, and depending on where I’m headed, I usually cross the bridge right around dawn. The plan is to pause and look at the scene in the early light and decide if something really interesting might happen — and it that seems probable I’ll photograph here for a while before moving on.
The light and atmosphere on this winter morning were special enough to get me to pause. This area near the Golden Gate is often foggy, but it is almost always ocean fog, which blows in off the ocean in thick layers or forms over high ridges as the ocean-cooled air rises. This is the “San Francisco fog” that most of us know, the same fog that can make a June day in the City feel like a cool winter day.
However, another kind of fog also affects California and it occasionally makes its way into the Bay Area. On cold winter mornings, especially if there has been rain, thick tule fog forms up and down the huge Central Valley. This is a very different sort of fog. It doesn’t “blow in” from somewhere — instead it simply appears in still air “on location,” and it can become quite thick.
Something else can occasionally happen in the winter. Our prevailing winds come in off the ocean, coming from the northwest or west in good weather and from the southwest, south, or southeast when a storm is approaching. However, sometimes a high pressure system will produce “offshore winds” that come from the northeast or even the east and blow toward the ocean. When that happens during times of tule fog these winds can push this fog west toward the Bay Area. (Bay Area residents will notice that steam from buildings is heading west in the photo.) There is a natural gap between the San Francisco area and the Central Valley where the great Central Valley rivers flow into the Bay, and a river of tule fog can work its way through this gap.
This was one of those mornings. Rather than watching fog encroach on the bay from the ocean to the west, the hazy atmosphere was flowing through that gap in the east and creating a luminous glow in the air. Above that was a long thin remnant of passing high altitude weather, a long and bright single band of crisp bright clouds above the soft lower atmosphere. That atmosphere was hazy enough to mute details but not thick enough to obscure the primary forms of buildings. Because it was backlit, it took on sort of luminous glow, too, and picked up strong blue tones from the sky.
Being there for this unusual scene and being able to photograph it was the result of many things. Frankly, foremost among them — as is often the case with landscape photography — was plain old good luck. While I can increase the odds that I’ll be in the right spot when something interesting happens, it is very rare to be able to accurately foresee conditions like this — especially the high, nearly white cloud that is so important to the effect of this photograph. Persistence is another important factor. I go to this location frequently, often arriving when it isn’t all that special. This means that I’m more attuned to the patterns of the scene, that I am better at recognizing exceptional conditions when they occur, and that by being there more often I increase the chances that I’ll encounter something a bit out of the ordinary. Flexibility is also important, since I often photograph here while I’m on my way to or from something else – I have to be ready to delay or give up that original plan if something interesting happens here.
The Photograph Exposed series:
- A Photograph Exposed: “Submerged Boulders, Lake, and Cliffs” (2010)
- A Photograph Exposed: A Tale of Light (2011)
- A Photograph Exposed: Photography and Luck (2012)
- A Photograph Exposed: “San Francisco Skyline — Winter Fog and Haze” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: “Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: “Two Islands, Fog” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: “Shoreline Reflections, Trees and Rocks” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: One Subject, Two Compositions (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: Technique and Interpretation in Post (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: Je Suis Bleu (2022)
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
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