Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.....

OK, so that’s the postman’s creed, but it’s also emotively, the conditions I like to work in visually. We haven’t had much snow around here this winter (62 F degrees yesterday!). The other day it did rain heavily and that was followed by some wonderful fog. It was a fog that kind of rolled around low to the ground and the water, changing the landscape as it moved.

What I like about rain and fog is how they change the pallete of the landscape allowing me to work with darker more saturated tones. Wet colors are vibrant and deep. The fog allows me to simplify my visual experience in the images I make. With fog in the landscape, I can isolate elements against clean, textureless, evocative backdrops, drawing the viewer’s attention to what excited me most visually. There is a sense of mystery involved for the viewer as parts of the landscape are enshrouded.

In this first image, the tree limbs seem to reach out from nothingness as fog above lake waters obscures their trunks and the ground. It is an image that seems the reverse of what we would expect to see which enhances its sense of mystery.

(c) 2012 Paul Grecian - http://www.paulgrecianphoto.com

 

In this second image (part of my “pathways” series), I use the fog to obscure the end of the path which not only simplifies the image visually but adds a good deal of suspense to the piece. Sometimes I like having the viewer need to finish the “story”. I also like sensual lines, in this case both the foreground tree on the left and the curves of the path itself both contribute and offer contrast to the otherwise straight lines of the woods. Compositionally, I use the foreground tree to point the way up the path as well.

 

(c) 2012 Paul Grecian - http://www.paulgrecianphoto.com

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