Low contrast Foggy morning

Tuscany in Italy is a very popular area where you can find beautiful panorama of hills, vineries and wheat fields between the medieval towns and villages. It is an attractive place where there are delicious foods and wines of Chianti, Montepulciano, Montalcino and may others. Every small village on top of the hills hides at least one trattoria offering outstanding foods with typical Tuscan flavouring. Tuscany is one of the most photographed scenes even in autumn. The landscape is given and easy to find good location to take nice pictures. I have taken several pictures in Tuscany in late summer, when there were bright colors of golden wheat fields after harvesting, deep green vineyards and thujas. However, I wanted something different that shows the shapes of the nature and also the atmosphere of Tuscany from a different angle.

Dull light

Foggy landscapes are quite popular, however if the mist covers almost everything and the contrast is almost vanished then we must take care of taking photo and also we should consider the after-work facilities. The dull colors are the most conspicuous phenomenon in the picture, which is typical of the autumn scenes strengthened by the fog. What can we do? Common considerations are waiting for better light, bright colors of sunset or taking something in the front and keep the background in mist. Actually, I was interested in taking a wide landscape without the sky and no hard silhouettes so it was not an option to wait for different lighting conditions. Therefore, I have chosen to take a picture, which would be converted to B&W, where not only the shapes are dominating but the tones, as well. Tones are key elements of the foggy landscape. It cannot be omitted like usually done in case of hard silhouettes of backlights.

Extra low contrast

Besides dull colors, there was extra low contrast because of the fog. In case of fog, haze or mist there are a lot of limitation of taking pictures because there are low contrast, often pale colors and no shades. In spite of the disadvantages of the scattered light, in general there are unique facilities to make photos with special atmosphere with composing objects near to the camera where the fog is not so dense that extends the depth of field, involving strong (artificial) lights that makes the streaks visible or emphasizing shapes and silhouettes. When I took the photo there was a quite specific situation since at the top of the hill it was clear and in the valleys the fog was scattered. Have a look at the original picture! It is hard to believe that so many tiny details are hidden in the picture behind the mist. It is well described in many places that the shadowed part of the pictures taken by digital cameras, hides many details and can be edited afterwards. It is also well known that if there is high contrast then underexposing the picture, the dark details can be recovered during the after-work process. What is the situation in case of fog? Fortunately, we can recover many items from the mist by increasing the contrast. Actually, it worth playing with the adjustment of the contrast and avoid to change it in general but edit only the high and midtones.

Composition

When I took this image I had a concept of foggy scene without strong silhouettes, which reflects the atmosphere of the Tuscan hills. Also, I wanted to make the photo as simple as I can but definitely indicate something typical from this location. First of all thujas and hills are coming into my mind if I imagine Tuscan landscapes. Of course, thinking may not stop at scenes of hills; just imagine pappardelle al ragù di cinghiale with a bottle of Tuscan red wine, zuppa di ceci alla Toscana or roasted chops of lamb.
Let’s return to the valleys, the mist and the thujas. A row of two types of cypress was loomed through the fog edging the road leads to a farm. The row of ball shaped trees and the tall pencil cypresses stand one after the other leaning upward in contrast with the sloping hill in the foreground.
The most complex part of the picture was the background because in the original photo it was almost fully covered by fog and the white background was so meaningless. Actually, I had no more option to re-compose the picture because involving more of the foreground would upset the balance. Nevertheless the retouching was successful and all the necessary details came up after increasing the contrast, which gave nice background.