153: Foggy and frosty

(Morning sun burning through the fog.)

Foggy and frosty.  Sounds like it should be the name of a cartoon duo.  I need a lesson in blog post titles, as well as how to title your photos.

We had fog here in the Bogs during the early morning hours.  Fog plus cold temps (the low was about 4°F) often equals frost of some kind so I went out early today to see what had developed.  Hoar frost!  Nice, big, feathery, fluffy hoar frost was covering just about everything. The closer to the pond and to the ground one got, the bigger and fluffier the hoar frost.

Unfortunately for me, the best of the hoar frost involved a lot of white on white.  Beautiful to look at.  Difficult to photograph.

Last year I was lucky enough to catch the hoar frost on a sunny day so I could shoot upwards, towards the sky, which gave the photos much-needed contrast.

All I could do was work with what I was given.  I tried a variety of settings on the camera, played with the white balance, and ultimately ended up doing a lot of tweaking in Photoshop to bring out the contrast.

The pond was a big help.  Adjusting the levels and contrast resulted in the ice on the pond looking blue.

I wish you all could have been there to see it.  Mother Nature seems to have decided to go all-out this winter, putting on the best of her winter displays.  (Reminder:  Click on the photos to see the slightly larger view.  You can see more details that way.)

I was out for a little over two hours.  It had warmed up to about 10°F by the time I went out, and it felt quite cold at first.  Eventually I didn’t notice the cold at all.

This morning’s yoga and exercise is what I think of as The Photographer’s Workout.  It involved a lot of walking, including a nice, big hill, as well as bending, stretching, squatting, and lying on the ground then pushing back up to a standing position.

It’s a fun way to work out.  And that last hill got my heart rate up and helped me work up a sweat.  I wonder if I could market this workout?

That’s about it from the Bogs today.  I’ll leave you with a few more photos of hoar frost, and a few of the sun.  As of early this afternoon, it still had not managed to burn through the fog.  The hoar frost, by the way, was gone by 11:00am.  You have to get out early if you want to catch hoar frost.

Oh!  I almost forgot.  Yesterday’s sunset lit up the ice hanging from the clothes line.  It was some of the prettiest stuff I’ve ever seen hanging on the line.  Not the best of shots, but it will give you some idea of what it looked like.

See you tomorrow!