Photo Wednesday: Sunrise in the Refuge

This is from a pre-dawn visit to San Luis National Wildlife Refuge looking for sandhill cranes, and just as the sun started to peek over the horizon and touch the ground, it generated convetion fog and visibility went almost to zero. In California’s Central Valley, it’s known as tule fog, and it can hang around for days in the right condition. Here, it lasted maybe 5 minutes, for but that five minutes I was scrambling to get a wide angle lens on the camera and find a composition before it faded away. Given this was taken hand-held out the car window, I rather like how the short crazy time worked out.

I sometimes get asked how I get the results I get, usually from non-serious photographers who can’t understand why their images don’t turn out like this. My short answer: four hours of waiting around, five minutes of panic.

Camera Info: Fuji X-T20, 16-=55mm @44mm, 1/1000 @ F8, ISO 3200