Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Photography in the fog

click photo to enlarge
When I lived in Hull and the weather was foggy I often heard the sound of the ships' foghorns as they negotiated the River Humber into the port or went out into the North Sea. Living on the Lancashire coast I heard them occasionally: there were fewer ships, fog was infrequent, and technology had advanced compared with when I lived near the east coast. Now that I'm in Lincolnshire I experience more fog than in either of the other locations but I recall hearing a ship's foghorn only once. I suppose I'm too far from the sea and ships in The Wash are relatively few, smaller, and fairly quiet.

In common with much of eastern England we've recently had a few days of mist and fog and I've made a point of going out with my camera to see what I could snap. As I've said elsewhere in this blog, fog is one of those weather conditions - like snow - that transforms a landscape and allows the photographer to make very different images in very familiar surroundings. Unfortunately inspiration seemed to have deserted me on my forays into the gloom and I came back with very little that satisfies me. The two shots I post today are the best of my meagre pickings.

Certainly, to my mind, they don't compare with some of my earlier efforts such as this jetty and yacht, this tree, this cottage or this Fenland "view". The smaller of today's offerings shows a new footbridge over a dyke on a footpath near Donington. The main image is the west end of Donington church. This marvellous piece of medieval architecture has a very interesting west doorway. It dates from the fourteenth century and, unusually for a village church, has a projecting hood with an ogee arch that protects the inner arch and door. Time and weather have eroded the sharp details of this feature, but the sculpted leaves and other mouldings can still be discerned under its current generous covering of moss.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On