A foggy walk in the woods

The weather around here has finally thawed enough for me to comfortably walk outside! I have been out there the past few months, just not so comfortably. A few days ago, a thick fog rolled in. I rushed out to a wooded area where I knew I could get some good, spooky fog photos. The two forest areas I visited did not disappoint! I find it interesting how these photos look like they could have been taken in November. These don't feel like March photos to me. Actually, I think the snow preserved those leaves in exactly the same place they were in November. Our winter came in really fast this year.

Looking up... If you've never tried taking a photo above your head in the woods, give it a shot. It's sometimes surprising to see what's directly above your head.

It was pretty peaceful in the forest. I saw one squirrel and heard loads of seagulls for some reason. 

This one is possibly my favorite photo of the group.

So this is a different forest area. It's actually named "Sherwood Forest". It's so hard to believe that this area can ever look as sparse as this. Not that this is all that sparse, it's just super dense with leaves during the rest of the year.

I call this giant fallen tree "The Snake Tree" and I'm sure you can see why!

I think this is the spookiest of the photos. I didn't feel spooked when I was actually there, but looking at this now, I am.

Anyone know what kind of tree this is? These look like little cherries or berries hanging from the branches. Whatever the little berries were, they were really rough and textured looking.

This is a favorite area of the woods for me. 

The water droplets were still hanging off the tree branches. If you look really closely, you might see some upside down tree shapes in those drops. I kept thinking that it had started to rain again when I was in the woods, because I thought I heard a steady rain. It was probably just the sound of the water that was already there dripping.

You guys might remember this last tree from a previous blog post. I can't even imagine how tall it is. I probably have a photo of this tree during every season, because I like its shape so much. 

Hope you guys enjoyed looking at these photos as much as I enjoyed revisiting them. It's amazing what I don't see until I get home and have a chance to study my photos. I was walking pretty quickly at the time, hoping to get these photos taken before the fog lifted or I got rained on! Luckily, neither of those two things happened. But now that I'm home looking these over, I'm liking what I'm seeing and thinking about maybe using some of these photos for some kind of future project. 

It was a dark and foggy night

A few nights ago my mom and I took a walk in the fog. The streetlights were casting an eerie glow that seemed to hang in the mist.

Those are car headlights lighting up the tree's silhouette. It was good timing for me to have a car drive up as I was taking a photo.

It looks like something could creep out of the corners of this photo, doesn't it?

Some people had their Halloween yard decorations out already. It might be hard to see here, but these inflatable ghosts had witch hats on. These were some of those cool inflatables where the little twinkle lights move around inside.

These were in the same yard.

Some cut-out monster silhouettes made a very cool display in the front window of the house across the street. I know these are 2D but it felt like a display, something you might see in a store window. I thought the string lights were a nice touch too.

This is a giant eyeball being projected onto the side of a house. It changed colors and this red was by far my favorite of them.

Here's a classic. The string lights added a really bright glow.

And speaking of classics... I love this! Yeah, I've probably taken a picture of this for years, but here it is again. ;) There's something kind of mysterious about the curtains being pulled around the pumpkin.  

Here's another one you might have seen in years past - the Casper outdoor lamp cover. Usually when you see these they're plastic jack-o-lanterns. Maybe you guys have even seen that craft online where people take the plastic jack-o-lantern treat buckets and cut them in half, using the half to cover their porch lights.

This one is slightly spooky with that uplit scarecrow behind the pumpkin.

Now, it may be a little hard to tell what's going on here, but these people have a rope with a string of lights around it going across their yard from tree to tree. Hanging in the middle is a figure they made.

Now, I'm not entirely sure about this figure. It is wearing a Scream mask and maybe some painter's white coveralls? Anyway, it's creepy having anything that looks like a life-size human hanging over you.

So this is about the point in the walk where a man emerged from his house to tell us that he'd just seen three coyotes creeping around his yard. He said they looked like they might go for his daughter's dog so they took it in. Then the man drove off, leaving us in the dark and fog looking around for coyotes. We never saw or heard any but that didn't keep me from looking over my shoulder every few minutes on the walk back.

I'll leave you guys with this little skeleton in a cauldron. This one might be worth looking at in the daylight to see what's going on. But it looks like maybe a small graveyard covered in cobwebs is surrounding the little guy.

I hope you guys are all doing well and enjoyed this little virtual walk through the fog. I have to get out there with a camera on the lucky nights when a fog like this rolls in. 

A foggy walk, ice crystals, and a swamp monster!

Today was a very foggy day. To my surprise, the fog hung around for hours, into the night. As I was taking some photos of what it looked like around here, it struck me that these images looked a little like what was in my last blog post. These scenes are made of transparent layers, some lighter or darker than others. Can't you imagine this image as the inspiration for one of those tunnel books?

I was looking for some fog themed music to add to this post, and was surprised to find some choices. I really like this song. I recommend listening to it while looking through the photos because it's a good fit!

Celtic Mystique: The Foggy Dew

I listened to this while looking at a slideshow of my foggy photos and it added something. I began to feel like I was putting together a St. Patrick's Day blog post with this music, the fogginess, and all the green. Seeing green on the ground instead of white is really weird for January here, by the way. It will be 50° here in a few days!

Check out the little droplets hanging from these branches:

If you look really closely at this drop, you will see the landscape behind it upside down. It might help to enlarge the photo. Pretty cool, hey? It's like there's a little fisheye lens in there.

There was still ice along the curb. Here you'll see some of the leaves left from autumn which are looking surprisingly colorful and  fresh.

This little leaf was nearly transparent.

Here's the swamp monster! If you use your imagination, you'll see a face and two arms emerging from the ice. I even see a bit of a hand. He has kind of an Oscar the Grouch thing going on.

Do you see the tiny tree branches in these droplets?

This ice next to the curb reminds me of an ice queen's crown.

Some of these look like larger versions of crystals or snowflakes that you'd see through a microscope. Maybe you've seen some of that up-close crystal photography.

These looked like insect wings to me.

I like how still this one is. It just looks quiet. You know the painter, Edward Hopper? This reminds me of something he'd paint. It's quiet and kind of isolated looking.

Three soft little trees:

The fog was still hanging around at night, so I went out in the drizzle to take a few more photos.

I love the curving frame of this limb.

It was pretty spooky out there. I could hear all kinds of little noises. Dripping, something scurrying around. So, that cut the photo session a little short. :)

If you were following my blog back in June of 2011, you might have seen some foggy photos I took back then. It's interesting to look back at those, in part because the color is so different. Check out how blue these are:

Out of the fog


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