Woodland Photography in Foggy Conditions

Photography Tips

It can be a tough task to photograph nature during foggy conditions. While the feeling may be ethereal, the camera will struggle to replicate the same feeling in image form. And if you try to take forest or woodland photos in thick fog, the challenge will be greatly exaggerated in the closed and congested environment. So, how do you go about taking photos in these situations? To answer this question, we have photographer Mads Peter Iversen who shows you how you can take some moody forest photos on foggy days using a telephoto lens. He also shares the editing techniques that he uses which will inspire you to approach forest photography differently:

Since the fog can make it difficult to capture a wider field of view, a tactical alternative is to photograph just the prominent branches instead. Find a tree that’s fairly isolated from the rest of the bunch and use a telephoto lens. The compression will draw the distant trees closer towards your subject and the fog will help to add a moody atmosphere to the image.

A useful tip that Iversen shares for the process is to keep your ISO low. That’s because the post-processing technique that he recommends can introduce some noise to the image. So, shooting at the lowest ISO possible will ensure a clean slate for you to work with.

Next, for the post-processing part, Iversen shows you how you can use the dehaze tool locally to bring out details originally hidden by the thick fog. If you’re not familiar with this tool in Lightroom or Camera Raw, you will be surprised to see what this tool can do. But be sure to go easy with it.

“Photographing in very thick fog and combining it with the dehaze slider is just magical.”

And to give a final touch to the image, he demonstrates how you can use the high pass filter to sharpen the images to bring out some more details, and use a denoise plugin to get rid of any unnecessary noise in the image.

If you’ve been struggling with woodland or landscape photography during foggy conditions, be sure to try these tips and tricks. We’re sure you’ll love the results.