
Fog Waves Are the Most Beautiful Thing I Captured After 8 Years of Experimenting - shawndumas
https://www.boredpanda.com/fog-waves/
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RileyJames
These images are beautiful.

They remind me of a few times when I’ve been able to see the patterns the wind
creates, to visualise wind.

First up was strong winds in the desert, whipping sand off the dunes and
creating patterns in the air.

Second was in Canada, during light snow fall. A thin layer of snow, dust like,
was on the roads. And the cars / winds would whip it up to about 10 cm’s off
the road. It enabled the visualisation of both the wind and the air being
pushed around by cars and trucks. I found it mesmerising.

Usually it’s only visible through clouds, and it’s mostly static, unless the
wind is incredibly strong.

Does anyone have other situations where they’ve been able to see wind? Or
other usually invisible phenomena?

~~~
philiplu
I'm in the Seattle area. Every year in late spring, the cottonwood trees start
emitting huge quantities of seeds attached to fluffy "cotton". It gathers in
drifts on the road. The fluff is light enough to be tossed about by small eddy
currents in the air, so you can see how house walls, arbors, fences, small
trees affect the air movement. Fascinating, and something I look forward to
yearly.

~~~
RileyJames
Nice. Reminds me I saw something similar in Melbourne once, when the pollen
count was through the roof. But the wind was intensely strong, making it an
all round horrible experience lol. I was obviously not in the right mindset to
appreciate it.

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DoubleCribble
"This is where I coined the term “Fog Waves”"

Nope. Sorry, Nick. Harold Gilliam has been publishing at least since '62 on
the topic. "Fog Wave" can be easily found in the most recent scanned edition
of his book, __Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region: Second Edition __,
from 2002.[0] (no quick search reveals if the term is also in the '62 edition)

[0]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=aaYwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=aaYwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=harold+gilliam+%22fog+wave%22#v=onepage&q=harold%20gilliam%20%22fog%20wave%22&f=false)

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aasasd
The film Baraka has great shots of moving fog in mountains:
[https://youtu.be/r6BJkLWivzY?t=1029](https://youtu.be/r6BJkLWivzY?t=1029)

They are still my favorite nature shots. I'm remembering them when I remind
myself that the planet has way more great stuff than what I see daily around
me.

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kilbuz
Stunning. I flew out of SFO yesterday morning and as we flew over the city, a
thick white layer of fog covered everything except the very top of Sutro
Tower. Very sublime, it looked like a cloud sea with blue skies above.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> cloud sea with blue skies above

[https://vimeo.com/22439234](https://vimeo.com/22439234)

When I was a kid and on La Gomera, we rode a bus across the island to get to
our ferry very early in the morning, over mountains on very windy roads, and
seeing the sun rise _above_ the clouds... well, it's my first memory of being
moved in this deep yet light way (sublime is just the word) by something I saw
in nature, and I shall never forget it :)

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monk_e_boy
We play on the sea. When the weather is a bit grim you can see big clumps of
misty rain come in on the wind. They look voluminous and heavy. But you get to
be inside them. All swirly and wet.

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kposehn
Near my house we sometimes get a standing wave where the fog actually curls as
it flows SSE over the spine of the peninsula / Sweeney Ridge.

It’s pretty amazing. I love the fog for some reason :P

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cronix
That's beautiful. And I thought I was lucky to live in the hills above a river
that usually has a trail of thick fog hugging it in the Fall and Spring.

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egypturnash
At last, I know what Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is trying to capture.

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parliament32
>I do this by putting on dark filters known as ND or Neutral Density filters
that trick the camera into thinking it’s night time forcing a longer shutter
speed.

Author is knowledgeable enough about filters but can't figure out manual mode
on his camera?

~~~
samschooler
They just explained it oddly. ND filters reduces the amount of light so it is
possible to do long exposures during the day. If they tried to use manual long
exposure without ND, the photo would be fully white from all the light coming
in.

~~~
bagacrap
Thanks for the explanation. I immediately assumed he was using a phone or
something that similarly forced auto mode.

