Clouds and Fog
A quick personal message to explain my long absence and a bit about the future. If you want to skip it, click here.
It has been a long while since my last post… I must apologize to all of you who were waiting to see new images since July last year. Much has happened in my life since that time that required my attention. I had never printed my photos to more than postcard size before but, thanks to my presence online, I received an order for 3 large prints. Those changed my life. Since then, I’ve wanted to print my work on any occasion I get, seeing images on screen is certainly a colorful experience but seeing them etched on large-size paper is a completely different and deeply fulfilling experience. So, since July, I have worked at creating an online store, both on this website and on Naver for Korean users. After that, I tried to exhibit my photos and got the extreme fortune of being able to do just that for part of my “Pines on Cliff” series for two months. It is a humble-sized exhibition but the emotions brought by explaining my work and the meaning I place in it to visitors is invaluable. It is clear to me now that taking pictures of nature and printing them is what I want to do, it is who I am.
There is another side to that reality that is less bright, however. I am now doing photography full-time. It means that I have to put all my efforts into it so that my photos can support me financially. I expect it will take some time before that happens, being in Korea is both an advantage and an inconvenience so it is up to me to throw 100% in the battle. I learn every day about the marketing side of this business. It is quite interesting but the learning curve for me, an artistically driven person, is very steep.
Regardless of the difficulties ahead, I am determined to keep treading this path as far as I can. That is why I thank you very much for your patience and your continued support until now. I hope to satisfy your thirst for images and stories for a long time.
Thank you.
Let’s rewind a little. Summer is approaching its end in Korea, it is typhoon season. Very soon it will be very early fall bringing superb mountain morning fog. I want to show you some images from both these spectacular times. First the morning fog and then the typhoon season.
As morning temperatures start decreasing, fog emerges profusely from rivers and lakes. It is prime time for photographers to capture that untouchable floating blanket. The only catch is that it’s only early in the morning and difficult to predict. So up I must go, pulled forward by my hopeful heart.
If you are lucky, fog will form before sunrise. It will hide everything too far from you and make the rest look more mysterious. As it dances up and down the ridges it also hides and unveils parts of the view. It creates natural frames that draw your attention to parts of the view you would have missed otherwise. I love how it can help me focus on subdued subjects.
These trees would never stand out without the background fog. The view is entirely wrapped in a mist that is slowly shifting colors and allows for very simple compositions.
As time passes, the grey fog changes into a pink curtain. Color comes from a tiny point at first but quickly shifts to half of the sky. Sunrise is approaching. It is hard to determine exactly where it will emerge but somewhere in the middle of that enchanted mist. So I train my camera toward that, fingers crossed that it will, in fact, be in my frame.
This probably is the purest sunrise image I ever shot. Only subjects, not a single distraction.
Magic.
Here it is! Coming up from nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, casting light on nowhere. It almost feels as if I am looking at a different planet’s sunrise from my own little far away planet. Empty misty space between two worlds. The sun seems so far away I can barely feel its warmth heating my face as I am absorbed by the simple beauty right in front of me. A moment of calm perfection, floating in time as if immobile.
However, this fleeting moment goes away swiftly and leaves behind a warm and textured fog. Soon the Sun’s heat will dissipate the mist and wonder will fade with it. It is my last chance to capture the calm and dreamy atmosphere of this morning.
The last remnant of this morning, an ultimate wave of mist going across the ridge, lit by the directional morning sunlight.
The moment is gone. Time to come back down to the city for a well-deserved breakfast that I will eat still infatuated with views of this morning’s magical mist.
While the city stays stuck in heavy fog, a few lucky humans have a view worth their exorbitant rent.
Morning fogs certainly are majestic. Summer rains are another force to admire. When being inside a rain cloud may be the only way to find fog in the humid Seoul summer, staying in those clouds until they start to roll away is the most poetic experience summer has to offer.
One instant all is grey, and the next a gigantic whole in the mist clears to reveal a faraway ridge you didn’t expect had been standing there the whole time. It is a relentless dance of the heavens and you have a front-row seat. You don’t even need to move along the trail, just stay there and look around you as clouds shift and point toward different surprising directions.
This image is an illustration of the fact that, when clouds dance, you don’t need to be high to enjoy the show.
The next image is also a city shot, the last one. It is so rare to see such a view I had to include it.
Seeing the cloud ceiling so clearly and so low is rare. Add to this the legendary Namsan Seoul Tower, engulfed in a fight for visibility with swarms of clouds. The result is an exceptional render in which the tower’s spire floats over the city, like a long-forgotten Olympus.
Namsan Tower isn’t the only man-made structure you can find on top of mountains, weather stations and military installations are all over the country. I don’t particularly like seeing them, they break my natural contemplations. However, once in a while, they can be used as focal points.
This image feels as if it was taken on another planet, as if the antennas were sending hourly reports of the human colony on Proxima Centauri b back to Earth. I really enjoy how the structure contrasts against the white clouds.
On Proxima Centauri b, this is the path to get to those antennas for brave repair workers…
However, I much prefer playing with the shapes of the mountain ridges in the fog rather than relying on human structures in my images. Therefore the next picture is an illustration of what we call mountain layers, bare ridges that look like islands, lost in a rain cloud.
I like this image because it feels so peaceful. These clouds have edges and yet have neither beginning nor end. They are simply a visible intangible presence that magnifies these mountain ridges. An ethereal veil for the sheer pleasure of the eyes and the peace of mind.
While, in reality, I was getting battered by the rain while shooting it. No calm for me!
The next image I shot with a precise artistic intention. If you have never seen classic black and white Korean (or Chinese) landscape paintings, click here to see some first. You will notice how fog has a prominent role in the composition of those powerful artworks. Clouds place subjects in a prominent place and hide everything else. It is no different than many of the tricks we still use today in photography. Here is me, trying to pay homage to those masterpieces of the past.
Unlike those old paintings, there was no major cliff or rock formation where I stood that day. But the clouds at the bottom helped create a frame, connecting with the sky, to encircle part of a ridge and a far away antenna. I can imagine this picture on a traditional partition in the background of a tea ceremony room. It also shows how windy and tormented the weather is, making the clouds chaotically bend to its will. Definitely, a place I love to be immersed in.
I would like to conclude this post with a bit of philosophy. So far, I have shown you the serene atmosphere of morning fog and the impetuous rains of summer. It seems to me that the life of a photographer can be compared to that of a bird in the storm, flying against the currents to find an area of calm and meaning.
Or is it your life too? Aren’t we all tiny specks of sheer hope and courage navigating the unpredictable flow of life?
Thank you for reading this first 2022 post, I hope it took your mind away from Omicron and the current world’s madness.
Finally I want to wish you all a happy new year, may you achieve your goals, give love and receive love throughout the next 365 days.
Follow me on instagram @romainphoto_outside for more photography than I can blog about!
Feel free to leave a comment below hiking/photography suggestions and share my blog so that, one day maybe, I can meet you on a hike!
A bientôt!