Silhouettes using a streetlight in heavy fog

Craig

Craig

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Staff member
The other night when taking out the trash, our house was buried in heavy fog. I couldn't see even a few houses down the street. All the streetlights glowing orange were turning the "sky" orange.
So, I grabbed my camera with my trusty 18-200VR, cranked the iso up to 1600 and went to work.
These are both trees in my front yard. One is of course a palm tree and the other is one of our frangipanis. Right now the frangipanis have lost all their leaves and flowers, so they are just giant twiggy trees in our yard.
These trees make the flowers that they make leis out of!
I adjusted my f-stop to f5.6, which is the min f-stop for this lens at 200mm, and spot metered off the area glowing off the street light.

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That gave me a shutter speed of 1/15, so luckily I can hand hold that thanks to the VR in the lens. I took a shot and it was still way underexposed so I ended up using shutter speeds of 1/10 and 1/6.
Thank goodness for our LCD screens, if I were shooting film I would have ended up with nothing being exposed due to my own inexperience!

Also, this is one my first deliberate shots without active-dlight. I gotta say, so far, I'm not missing it! I had the contrast up just a little.
I did very little post to these photos.
I cropped the frangipani to 8x10 to crop out the streetlight post.
In both I lightned the shadows a bit, added more contrast, and noise and sharpening tweaks.
 
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Great shots Craig! I love that look - fog is something I've always liked but the type we get here in Florida tends to come at night and dissipate fast (I used to love California coastal fog - it comes in as thick as pea soup and takes quite a while to burn off).

And I know that sodium streetlight color of orange that fog produces - it's awesome! I had a similar scene a few years ago taking out the trash - I didn't have high ISO capability with my camera at the time, so I grabbed the tripod for a shot or two down the street, just to capture that mystical orange glow:

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What was wild is that the tennis courts across the street from my house have a different, more greenish hue lighting - so at the same time the orange was lighting up the streets and houses, this weird creepy green was shining through the field and banyan trees by the courts:

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We didn't get that much fog last night on this side - there may be a little tonight. I'd love to see it again. You were lucky to get that nice thicker fog over on your side...keep the camera ready tonight in case you get more!
 
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These pictures are great! I love the creep factor... and that you both saw it by taking out the trash.

Tho not quite the same, these pics of fog are of Lake Michigan about a month ago when it was -13F! They are a little weird on the angle because I had to take them out an apartment window (which is rather dirty). I didn't do anything in post (including cropping), but I think I was playing around with the WB a lot while shooting.

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That is mondo cool, Deniz! I love the thick cloudy fog patches rising off the water - something I've rarely seen in the last 25 years of my life living in warm climates. I even like the flare you got - two distinct suns with two flares...neat effect.
 
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Thanks Justin! I've seen the lake do some pretty funky things in my last three winters in Chicago, but this was by far the most pronounced fog I have seen. My other favorite lake moment was when it had frozen over, then snowed over, and in the snow were tire tracks leading off into the distance. I wish I had taken a picture of that!
 
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ha! I missed that. All I noticed was that I've never seen a white pelican down here, and this guy flies in from Montana and spots a whole flock no problem!
I have to go to Animal Kingdom to see white pelicans, geez!

Kind of like me and Dina never go to the beach, but we sit on the beach of a stinky man made lake (Bay Lake and Seven Seas Lagoon) and think we're in Heaven!
 
It's allllll relative, isn't it Craig? ;)

(oh, and btw, my quick math on the street costs of what ole Moose had there: Over 18k in the camera alone, not accounting for the tripod, head, or of course, the memory card!)

I'm not too worried about it though...his work is worth every bit of him being a Nikon top tier (free-ish) guy
 
yep, I love Moose's blog and Joe Mcnally's blog. they seem to share just about everything they do!
 
If you (or anyone for that matter) hasn't taken a look at the new Nikon Lighting CLS video (Joe is in it), do it! It's fantastic!
 
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