Winter Fog

This has been a cold foggy winter with some hoarfrost and beautiful soft light.  I showcased hoarfrost in my January 28, 2014 post, so this time I will show a few photos of the fog that creates the frost.

December 21, 2019 started out as a very foggy morning here in Montpelier, Idaho.  It was just 10 degrees (F), so I had to psych myself up to grab my camera, bundle up, and go outside before the sun appeared over the eastern hills.

I didn’t have to go far.  The cemetery and adjacent golf course are nearby where the fog was rolling in.  The sun barely appeared through the fog over the snowed-in golf course.

Naturally fog and a cemetery work well together to create an eerie atmosphere.  The subdued light and extreme cold tend to create blue light.  I converted some of these images to black and white to present more neutral tones.

There are fields on the north side of the cemetery where this fence and the irrigation lines in the first photo seemed to stretch into infinity.

Here are some tips for taking photos in these cold damp conditions.  Batteries die in the cold so I keep one in an inside pocket or in my fairly warm truck.  Don’t keep your vehicle too warm because cold lenses will fog up when you get in out of the cold.  Try not to change lenses or your cold camera mirror can fog up.  Fingers get painfully cold in a hurry so I use warm mittens with fold-off finger covers.  I hope this helps your winter photo adventures.

Please respect my copyright and do not use my photos for any purpose without permission, and probably a small payment.

Ice Blocks and Hoarfrost

My January 12, 2016 “Mysterious Ice” post was in about this same location.  At that time, the ice was piled up in delicate sheets about a millimeter thick.  Now, huge blocks of ice have blown against North Beach jetty at Bear Lake State Park, Idaho.

Tons of ice stacked up here, and after a few days they were covered with hoarfrost.

Most of the piles of ice reached five to seven feet above the surface of the lake, but this one was at least ten feet high.  Backlighting by the sun really made the blue color of the ice stand out.

This photo was taken from about the same location as the opening photo from my January 12 post.  The boulders have been covered by the blocks of broken ice.

I noticed a delicate feather trapped in one of the ice blocks.  Access was difficult because it was in a little alcove in the ice, and I had to kneel on a jumble of slippery ice blocks.  There must have been billions of tiny hoarfrost crystals.  These photos were taken with a Tamron 90mm macro lens. 

There are a few open leads in the ice at the north end of the lake, but most of the lake is still covered with ice.  It will be interesting to see what happens when it warms up, especially if there is a strong wind to blow the ice to the shore.  This could be an exciting spring.

Please note that my photographs are copyrighted, and you cannot use them for any purpose without my permission.

Mysterious Ice At Bear Lake, Idaho

Winter is a beautiful time to photograph Bear Lake in Idaho and Utah.  The lake freezes over only about seven out of ten years despite the very cold winters.  Yesterday Bruce Grayum and I went to one of my favorite locations at Bear Lake State Park on the Idaho end of the lake.

I had trouble understanding what I was seeing when I looked down on the lake from the North Beach jetty.  There were mysterious streaks across speckled gray areas of ice.  I could hear faint, almost musical tones coming from the lake.

I walked down the boat ramp and around the shore, and discovered that the streaks were caused by a thin layer of ice being blown over thicker stationary ice.  The thicker, gray ice had beautiful frost crystals that were being wiped out by the moving thin layer of ice.

The noise I had heard was the windblown thin ice breaking and stacking against the shore.  It was no more than a millimeter thick, so the broken, glass-like ice was very sharp.

I don’t know if this thin ice will be enough to trigger a complete freeze of Bear Lake as long as the wind keeps shifting it around, but this is not what I am used to seeing here.  In previous years there have been blocks of ice like boxcars along the shore.  There always seems to be something new to see at Bear Lake.

I hope you enjoyed these copyrighted photos.  Please do not use them without my permission.

Bear Lake Valley Fog

Every winter, there is a week or so of heavy fog in the Bear Lake Valley.  If the temperatures are cold enough we are treated to a display of hoarfrost on the trees and fences.  Some years, the temperatures stay low enough to allow the frost to build up over several days to amazing thickness, as I showed in this 2014 post:
http://rosswalkerphotos.blogspot.com/2014/01/hoarfrost-in-bear-lake-valley.html

So far, this year has been a little different because the temperatures have warmed up enough in most places for the frost to melt in the afternoon.  So, every night a thin layer of frost starts to accumulate in the fog over again, but we haven’t had the very thick hoarfrost like last year.

But the fog is still beautiful, and a challenge to photograph.  My autofocus had difficulty with many scenes because objects are so indistinct.  Setting the camera on a single spot focus helped when I placed the sensor on the most distinct area I could find.

I walked around the edge of the golf course in Montpelier, Idaho, then a little way up a steep hill in fairly deep snow, and had the place to myself.  There was more frost here than in some other places, perhaps because the hill blocked the sun quite a while.

Later, Linda and I went out for a ride, looking for more fog scenes, and enjoyed this barn in Bloomington, Idaho.  The fog helped clean up the background clutter, and added some nice frost to the tree.

These big fog events can totally fill the valley with fog, and I had never seen it from above the clouds, so we drove to Garden City, Utah where we could find an overlook.  I wanted to go on an old abandoned road that has a great view, but it has been blocked off, so instead hiked along a ridge in fairly deep snow to get this view.  It is hard to believe that big, beautiful Bear Lake is buried in those clouds.  It was fun to see the valley from a new perspective.

These photos are all copyrighted.  Please do not use them without my permission.

Hoar Frost In The Bear Lake Valley

The Bear Lake Valley has a few days each winter when hoarfrost turns surfaces brilliant white.

Frost requires a good source of moisture, like the fog seen behind this tree, and when the moisture condenses directly to ice, frost is created.

As the frost grows larger, it becomes hoarfrost, and it can cling to nearly everything, creating masses of delicate white crystals.

There were several very foggy, cold days this January, resulting in beautiful scenes like this country lane in Montpelier, Idaho.

This is the same tree as the previous photo, taken after the fog cleared, with Old Baldy mountain in the background.  As long as the air temperature is low and there is no wind, hoarfrost can stay for days.

Simple objects like this barbed wire are transformed by a thick coat of hoarfrost.  These photos were taken in temperatures ranging from about -7 to +20 F.  All were taken in early morning before the sun and wind could destroy their delicate beauty.





Pine Creek, Wyoming

Pine Creek, Wyoming, is one of my favorite locations for winter photography.  Linda and I went there with our neighbors, Connie and Larry Hymas, today to see what our frigid weather had created. We had a good lunch at Blondie's in Cokeville then headed for the creek.

Pine Creek is in a deep canyon that gets very little sun during the winter.  The sunlight in this photo was striking high on the canyon wall and reflecting in the creek.

Deep in the canyon, the light shifts toward blue, so sometimes photos are much more pleasant in black and white.  Droplets of water splash onto rocks and freeze quickly, then more droplets add to the ice until fantastic, delicate formations are created.  Some of these formations hang over the waterfalls that created them.

The moving water of the creek brushes against snow covered branches and creates ice plates that spread over the water's surface.  All of these delicate ice formations disappear very quickly when there is a day or two with temperatures above freezing.

There are a lot of small cascades along the creek, and this is the largest waterfall with a drop of about ten feet.

When a big tree falls across the creek, the tangle of snow covered limbs tells an interesting nature story.

A frosted tree and a waterfall make a nice winter scene.  Just a little wind would destroy this delicate frost.

To take these photos, I used a tripod and set the ISO to 100, which is as low as it will go on my camera. This allowed me to use slow shutter speeds to blur the moving water in the creeks and waterfalls.  It was very cold, so I kept an extra battery in an inside pocket.  High boots were needed to climb down banks and through deep snow. I have trouble using gloves with camera controls, so I had to stop to warm my hands frequently.

We had a great time with Connie and Larry, who are active members of our camera club.  I can't wait to see their photos.

Winter patterns

This has been a strange winter so far in the Bear Lake Valley.  By now we should have a lot of snow on the ground, wildlife should be coming out of the hills, and the ski areas should be going strong.  There have been several storms and the weather has been cold, but there is little snow accumulation.  So what is out there for photographers?

When you add wind to a little snow you get drifts, and a simple weed with it's shadow in late afternoon light can be beautiful.

When the snow isn't very deep a little grass can stick out and add some simple straight lines to the beautiful snow curves.

The Bear Lake Valley often gets fog when the temperature drops and this can produce hoar frost or "rime".  Unlike the snow curves in the first two photos, to get rime there must be no wind at all.  The frost forms on nearly everything, often outlining leaves and branches.  Temperatures had been below zero for several mornings when this photo was taken.

The background in this photo is fog and naturally a little gray in the subdued light.  I was fortunate to find a place where all background detail was obscured.  This beautiful phenomenon will usually disappear soon after the fog dissipates and the sun strikes the frost.



Watch your exposure when photographing snow, frost, and fog.  The camera will try to expose an average gray, so you might need to add exposure to make your photos white enough.  But don't overdo it or you will lose the natural look. If all else fails, exposure can be tweaked in PhotoShop, but it is nice to get it right to begin with.