A lot of work goes into planning a photography outing, from selecting the location, double, then triple, checking the weather, and getting up hours before dawn to arrive in time for sunrise. It can be very disappointing to arrive at the perfect spot only to discover that the fog had rolled in and your planned shots of the sun rising over the coast are not going to happen. Fortunately, the muted light of an early morning blanketed in fog offers its own darker and more mysterious beauty.

While vacationing on the Maine coast, I drove through the town of Belfast several times, marveling of the view of the harbor from the bridge that spans the mouth of the Passagassawagkeag River. I decided to take an early morning stroll of the waterfront and shoot the harbor at sunrise from the pedestrian bridge. Despite all my planning, when I arrived I found the bay covered in a thick blanket of fog. It was eerie, standing alone in the middle of the river, almost everything blanked out by the fog in the dark. As the sun rose, the moored boats slowly came into view, one-by-one.

Given the low light, I had planned for long exposures, shooting with low aperture and ISO. Even with a low aperture, the depth of field remained shallow, as the flog blurred out almost everything, turning the background into a blank canvas.