Mist on the Marsh

A few weeks ago, I ventured out early for some sunrise photos in the company of friend and neighbour, Stewart Hamilton. We traveled eastward and noted that there were patches of ground fog, something that always contributes nicely to a photograph. We were close to Mount Yamnuska and chose it as our destination, believing we could get some early sunlight on the mountain’s face and the morning mist on a pond we had visited before.

We began with sunlight on the face of Mount Yamnuska but it became apparent that the colours would be muted on this particular morning. It happens. We turned our attention to the marshy area behind us where we were able to get a number of good pictures as the sun emerged.

This first picture was taken at 5:50 am, just after the sun had crested the horizon. The sun is just outside the picture’s frame to the left, very low in the sky, so that very little of the scene is directly illuminated. The subdued light creates a nice mood, particularly in the foreground where you see the mist blanketing the marsh grasses. The foreground shadows obscure a view of the detail of the grass. That would come soon.

Fifteen minutes later, the sun was well above the horizon and fully illuminating the landscape. This is a more challenging shot, into the sun but worth it for the  much better light available. The combination of light and shadows is quite dramatic and the level of light is just right to display the detail in the marsh grasses. If you look closely you can see dew on the grass, sparkling in the sunlight. You can still see the mist, notably in the background and the beams of sunlight highlighted by it. The technical term I’m informed is “God Beams”. I chose to include the sun itself in this scene, something I’m not normally inclined to do. Being such a large and bright area of the scene, there’s the risk it will dominate the picture. I think it works alright in this case because it is offset  to a large degree by the shadowy area in the opposite right hand corner. You be the judge. If your eye is drawn predominately to the bright sunlight, then I’ve probably made a “bad call”. If on the other hand, your scan begins on the right and  follows the lines leading to the sun (“god beams” and shadows on the grass), I probably have a good photograph.

Capturing the photos was pretty straightforward. At this hour, I used a tripod to permit some slightly longer exposures and applied a 4-stop, neutral density gradient filter to my lens to moderate the contrast between the sky and the foreground. Without it, the sky in the second picture would have been devoid of any colour and detail. I did fine tune a bit with Photoshop (toning down the sun’s brilliance) but was able to get the image pretty much as you see it with the camera and filter alone.