Fog at Pitt Marsh in Pitt Meadows

A series of Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) trunks and branches disappear into the fog near Katzie Marsh in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada.

Cottonwood Gradient (Purchase)

Many photographers who live here in the southwest corner of British Columbia dream of a day with some fog. A good day of fog, inland from the immediate coast, is kind of rare thing here in the Lower Mainland. It might happen a few times in the winter, or not at all. So on New Years Eve, with conditions nice and foggy up near Pitt Lake, I headed out make some landscape photographs with my new camera for only the second time. Trees and forest can be a rather chaotic subject to deal with, and a layer of fog tends to remove the background from the scene, allowing more attention to the shape of the branches and trunks without the distractions behind.

The first photograph here I titled “Cottonwood Gradient”. A title like this is rare for me, but this one reminded me a bit of a black and white gradient. The trees/trunks on the left are darker and closer together. As we move from left to right in the frame that diminishes until they are barely present in the background.

Trees and mist above the Katzie Loop Trail (Purchase)

I’ve photographed many scenes from the Katzie Marsh Loop Trail in the past, but only had to walk a short way from the parking lot to find these Hazelnut and other small trees and shrubs forming a partial tunnel over the trail. The fog doesn’t remove the background here, but it does soften the scene and gives me the usual feeling I have with photographs like this – what is around that corner?

Black Cottonwood Branches in the Fog (Purchase)

Much like the first photograph above, this scene has the fog doing its work to hide what is behind these cottonwood branches. The branches of these trees are still rather chaotic, but I made several images working with the patterns attempting to find something more coherent.

Pitt Marsh in the Fog (Purchase)

The fog was quite thick looking towards the west, and I wound up coming back multiple times to this small shrub along the water in Pitt Marsh. It looks like it is reaching towards the sky more than the others in the area, and I settled on this composition with a nice reflection eventually.

More photographs of clouds and fog from this day and others can be found in my Fog and Clouds gallery.