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The Fog as Prop
9 August 2022
The summer fog may require a meditative mind to appreciate it but step just a little away from it and you can easily admire what it brings to the party. It draws attention while it obscures with a flirtation that's irresistible.
The Bridge. Nikon D300 with 18-200mm Nikkor at 170mm (255mm equivalent), f8, 1/500 second and ISO 200. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
There, you've clicked through to see the horizontal crop on the headlines page become the vertical image presented here that we first saw walking west through the Presidio.
They are quite different images even though they are only different crops.
They are quite different images even though they are only different crops.
The first envelopes you in the familiar with tree tops on the horizon. Beyond them, a crown of fog and, surprise, poking up from that the Golden Gate Bridge. It speaks of magic, of the unexpected but also of the man-made rather than the natural world. Someone built that bridge. It didn't grow there.
The second is an entirely different thing. It places you on the ground, along a path that follows a winding road by a bus stop. The mundane lays out before you like an obstacle. You know you have to go around the bend to get anywhere.
But if you raise your eyes, you'll see an inspiring site. A tower protruding through the fog of the mundane. A place to go that is not evident in the path before you.
We can compress that a bit with a third crop that clips out the foreground and that works, although it takes you out of the picture.
And that is the crop one would typically make from this scene, we suspect. It's more economical. It keeps the bend in the road and the bus stop, the red curb echoing the bridge.
But it's an academic crop to us. A schoolbook exercise. Neither here nor there. Worth no more than a B+, say.
We think the long vertical is the stronger statement. But we also find the horizontal crop a powerful image.
None of them would work quite as well, though, without the fog as a prop.