It's true the summer provides all-day shooting, when its not being ‘uncharacteristically’ wet for the season, but if you want to capture the drama of dawn’s first steps you need to get up at a pretty unpleasant hour of the night. Winter’s great advantage for the photographer is that dawn and dusk happen at much more civilised times, and to make things more exciting the events of their passing are much less predictable.

Mist is one of winter’s gifts to the visually aware, whether it is rolling around the earth like dry ice at a rock concert or descending from the heavens to conceal the treetops. Make the most of its mysterious cloaking atmosphere for some haunting images or to portray a lonely subject. Mist rises around water and wet fields, making an excellent display both in the morning and in the late afternoon. As it tends to linger awhile you’ll have plenty of time to shoot, but watch out in the evening for the light falling off too much.

Ideal subjects include isolated animal or human portraits, old or ruined buildings, large rocks or empty city streets with the building lights glowing through the haze.


What You Will Need

Misty pictures look great in black & white as well as in colour, but shoot in colour as you can always turn a colour image black & white later if you want to. As the light tends not to be great at this time of the year, and especially early or late on a misty day, you might want to consider taking a tripod or monopod to avoid camera shake with those long exposures. Try to use the slowest ISO setting you can, as the neutral grey of mist shows up the coloured speckles of image noise rather badly.

You won’t need any filters or a flash, but a spare battery is always a good idea in cold weather. Keep yourself warm and dry too, so you don’t get tempted to go home before you’ve got that prize-winning shot.

Lenses – take both wide and long lenses. Buildings and street scenes will need a wideangle lens, but shots like this one need a longer focal length

Tripod – a tripod or monopod means you won’t have to risk a shaky picture, and you won’t need to use a faster, noisier ISO setting

Batteries – cold weather reduces the time batteries last so take a spare and keep it warm inside your clothing

Warm Clothes – keeping yourself warm and dry means you’ll be in better form for taking pictures