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Learn how to photograph fog. What types of fog are there? How can you predict fog? This blog will tell you.
If you want to photograph fog, you need to know what fog is. In meteorology, fog is defined as cloudiness in the atmosphere caused by floating water droplets (or ice particles) with an effective visibility of less than 1 km. Fog is therefore nothing other than clouds. Fog is more specifically stratus type clouds: stratus clouds in the lower atmosphere.
There is a significant difference between fog and clouds. Clouds form whenever air in the atmosphere is moved by convection or advection. Convection refers to a vertical exchange of air, as in a thunderstorm. Warm air rises and forms a cloud. In advection, air is transported horizontally from a location A to a location B. In this process, warm air meets cold air. In the process, warm air meets cold air, weather fronts are formed and these carry clouds with them.
Clouds and fog always form when air cools down. When air gets colder, the relative humidity increases. At some point, the air has become so cold that the humidity reaches 100%. The temperature to which air must cool to reach 100% humidity is called the dew point.
Another way in which fog is formed is by what is called advection fog. Advection fog is actually indistinguishable from clouds, they are clouds that float very low in the atmosphere. With advection fog, there is very cold air on the ground. At an altitude of a few hundred metres, warmer, moist air now flows into the atmosphere and the wind moves the warm air. Where the cold and warm air layers meet, fog is formed.
In summary, fog can be formed by radiation processes of a cooling ground and also by advection. However, clouds can only be formed by advection and convection.
As you can see, there are many complicated processes in the atomic sphere that cause fog to form. So that you as a photographer do not have to deal with meteorological details, we have developed our own weather parameters in VIEWFINDR with which you can photograph fog. This has made forecasting extremely easy. In VIEWFINDR we offer three weather parameters for the prediction of fog, which were developed in cooperation with landscape photographers and meteorologists. One thing to be said about all types of fog is that the transition is fluid. On days with fog, the fog is much more pronounced in some places than other places.
Fog veils are a local phenomenon. The landscape plays an enormous role in fog veils. To photograph this type of fog, you need to be in a valley or lowland. Bogs, lakes, bodies of water and meadows must be visited. The local conditions of these landscapes ensure that a particularly large amount of humidity can accumulate on windless and cloudless nights. Through the whale-free areas
If your subject that you want to photograph in fog is located in a valley or in the lowlands, you need a high probability for the occurrence of fog veils. To do this, use the “Fog” parameter in the VIEWFINDR app. The higher the probability, the more likely you are to find fog on your subject. The fog parameter also shows you where the fog will be particularly dense and where it is more likely to be dense fog. The yellow colour serves this purpose. If you see a lot of yellow, it is important that you also check the “dense fog” parameter. If both the “Fog” parameter and the “Dense Fog” parameter in the VIEWFINDR app indicate fog, it is grey, dense fog instead of fine fog veils.
Dense fog fills entire valleys, it covers everything in a grey blanket of clouds, the sky is often not really visible. The best way to photograph this fog is to get to an elevated location from which you can shoot to your subject. The subject and your location must be above the fog. You can easily find this out by using the “Dense fog” parameter in the VIEWFINDR app.
This shows you the approximate height at which the top of the dense fog will be. It should be noted that this is only approximate. Our forecast can predict the height of the fog to within about 50m. Therefore, you have to reckon with the fact that your subject may be in the fog after all. Unfortunately, this is as good as it gets.
Dense fog is therefore only suitable in mountainous or hilly regions, because in the lowlands dense fog is just a grey soup.
High fog and dense fog can hardly be distinguished. This is also not important for photographers, because usually no photographer wants to be under the high fog. Below the high fog there is nothing but a grey cloud cover and very hazy air. Either you have to shoot in the fog, where you can take exciting photographs in the forest, or above the high fog. To achieve this, you again use the parameter “dense fog” to estimate the height of the top of the fog. If you want to shoot in the fog, you have to stay below the height of the fog. If you want to photograph a subject above the fog, you must search above the height of the fog.
Sometimes clouds that stick to a mountain ridge appear like fog to you. However, this should not be confused with the real fog discussed earlier. To see if certain mountain peaks are in fog, you can use two different weather parameters in the VIEWFINDR app. On the one hand, there is the parameter “Fog”. This shows whether a mountain peak will be in fog. This is easy to see when the mountain peaks are marked by yellow pixels. It is then not real fog, but ordinary clouds that stick to the mountain top. It is very easy to distinguish between the two: the fog is always in the valley instead of on the mountain top.
Sometimes clouds that stick to a mountain ridge appear like fog to you. However, this should not be confused with the real fog discussed earlier. To see if certain mountain peaks are in fog, you can use two different weather parameters in the VIEWFINDR app. On the one hand, there is the parameter “Fog”. This shows whether a mountain peak will be in fog. This is easy to see when the mountain peaks are marked by yellow pixels. It is then not real fog, but ordinary clouds that stick to the mountain top. It is very easy to distinguish between the two: the fog is always in the valley instead of on the mountain top.
