Through the Lens: Making the Most of Foggy Mornings

Fog has a way of making a familiar place look completely different.

Trees fade into the background. Shorelines disappear. Colors become muted, contrast drops, and the landscape takes on a quieter feel. For a wildlife photographer, that can initially seem like a problem. The light is low, autofocus may struggle, and the photograph on the back of the camera can look flat and gray.

But fog is not bad light. It is simply different light—and once you learn to work with it, it can produce some of the most interesting wildlife photographs you'll make.

Let the Fog Simplify the Scene

One of the hardest parts of wildlife photography is often not the animal. It is everything around it.

Branches, bright patches of sky, tangled vegetation, distant trees, and other distractions can compete with the subject. Fog has a remarkable ability to make much of that clutter disappear.

Instead of trying to see through the fog, use it.

A bird perched among several layers of vegetation may suddenly stand almost alone as the background fades away. A deer that might normally blend into a complicated woodland scene can become much more prominent. Even common wildlife can take on a completely different character.

This is one of those situations where less detail can actually make a stronger photograph.

Pay Attention to Exposure

Fog can also fool your camera.

A camera's light meter is designed to produce an exposure around a middle tone. When it sees a scene filled with bright fog, it may try to darken the image. The result can be fog that looks dull and gray rather than light and atmospheric.

Adding a little positive exposure compensation can help.

Depending on the scene, something in the neighborhood of +1/3 to +1 stop may be enough to keep the fog looking bright while still protecting detail in the subject.

There isn't one setting that works every time. The important thing is to watch your histogram and highlights rather than simply trusting the meter.

You want the photograph to feel like the morning actually looked.

Don't Sacrifice Shutter Speed

Foggy mornings are often dark mornings, and that creates another challenge.

It can be tempting to keep ISO as low as possible because we want clean photographs. But if keeping ISO low causes the shutter speed to drop too far, we may end up with a perfectly clean photograph of a blurry animal.

For wildlife, I'll take a little noise over motion blur.

Birds are constantly moving their heads, shifting position, flicking their wings, or hopping between branches. Even an animal that appears still may move just enough to soften the image.

Keep an eye on shutter speed and allow the ISO to rise when necessary. Modern cameras and editing software handle noise remarkably well. They cannot fix a photograph where the subject moved during the exposure.

Give Autofocus Something to Find

Fog reduces contrast, and autofocus systems generally perform better when they have contrast to work with.

Instead of trying to focus on an indistinct portion of the animal, look for something with a defined edge or texture—the eye, the head, the edge of the body, or a contrasting patch of plumage.

Sometimes autofocus will simply take a little longer in fog. That is another reason not to rush.

Wildlife photography often rewards patience anyway. Fog just makes that lesson a little more obvious.

Be Careful With the Edit

There is another temptation waiting once you get the photographs onto the computer: Dehaze.

A little dehaze, contrast, or clarity can help restore some definition to a foggy photograph. Too much can completely remove the atmosphere that made the scene interesting in the first place.

If the morning was soft, quiet, and muted, I want the finished photograph to retain some of that character.

Editing should help reveal what you saw—not turn a foggy morning into a clear one.

The same applies to saturation. Colors in fog are naturally subdued. Pushing them too far can quickly make the image feel artificial.

Sometimes restraint is the most important editing decision you can make.

Slow Down and Look

Perhaps the best thing fog does for a photographer has nothing to do with camera settings.

It forces you to slow down.

You begin noticing layers in the landscape. You watch how an animal moves in and out of the mist. You pay more attention to silhouettes, backgrounds, negative space, and small changes in light.

The atmosphere itself becomes part of the photograph.

That is when wildlife photography becomes more than simply recording what animal was standing in front of you. You begin photographing the entire experience—the wildlife, the habitat, the weather, and the feeling of being there.

The next time you wake up and see fog outside, don't wait for it to burn off before grabbing the camera.

Grab the camera before it does.

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