I was driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina soon after sunrise, moving in and out of low-lying clouds as I went. I was hoping to capture some images of autumn trees, their colors saturated in the muted, diffused lighting.

Some stretches of the parkway were completely enveloped in clouds, while other stretches brought vistas into foggy valleys below the road. It almost seemed like a dream as I alternated between seeing very little in the clouds and then coming to wide views beneath the clouds. When I came out of the clouds to the Mills River overlook on the parkway, ground-level fog shrouded much of the valley below.

I stopped at the overlook to take some wide-angle images of the valley beneath the clouds. Then I noticed this detail in the valley floor of fog flowing over brightly colored trees. Much more than the wide-angle shots, this detail in the scene captured the mood, lighting, and dream-like quality of the morning.