Fog and Smoke

Fog, and when it occurs, smoke, are transformational. Fog renders light translucent and shrouds the world in mystery. It reduces and simplifies, it obscures and limits focus to mere suggestion. As it recedes, it is as if a veil is being lifted as the world slowly returns to focus. Several of these pictures were taken early one morning on a meadow near Lake Tahoe. At first, the path across the meadow was barely visible; over the course of minutes, the fog drifted away, then burned off, revealing more and more of the meadow, the grass, fends, water and finally the mountains in the distance.

Smoke, especially wildfire smoke, is the sinister brother to fog; stinging the eyes, clotting the lungs, it is similarly reductive and transformational, but there is no mystery born by smoke, only the reminder of tragedy happening somewhere over the horizon.