My buddy and I got out of the city an hour or so before blue hour began, drove about 45min to Pitt-Addington Marsh, got there just in time for blue hour in the early morning. We stopped the car on the side of the road next to the marsh, everything was frosty and misty, it looked eerie but relaxing at the same time.
We started walking on this path of grass, I wasn’t really sure what to shoot, the fog was so thick, could barely see 20 feet in front of us. I started noticing some of the trees were being isolated by all that fog, so I chose an old Pentax 135mm lens I have to shoot these trees, I set the aperture almost wide open, because I wanted to amplify the sense of density of fog, not that it needed it because it was already pretty hard to see the trees, but I wanted the photo to feel almost claustrophobic using that wide open aperture.
After that photo of the tree we kept walking for a bit longer to see what we could find. I had no idea what the area was like or what was around, I like taking photos that way without much preparation because I prefer that sense of spontaneity, it doesn't lock my mind to an idea, it’s just let’s it flow with whatever happens in the moment, but that’s beside the point.
As we walked, we started to hear these loud bangs, we weren’t sure what they were at first, but by the 2nd or 3rd bang, we knew those were shots, with the thick blue fog, hearing shots, we were kinda scared to get shot haha. We figured out they were hunting for birds and were most likely aiming high, but not wanting to risk losing our heads we left the marsh and went back to the car.
This photo was taken right next to the entrance gate to that marsh area, I saw that weird looking leafless tree on the other side of the road and these branches coming from the top on my side of the road and thought that made a nice composition.
We got in the car and continued driving down the road, we reached a dock with a few boats by the shore and all these wooden sticks on the ground, I thought that was pretty interesting. The day was starting to get brighter by this point, I still wanted that cool blue look to the photo, so I quickly went down by these broken docks and tried to find a composition where none of the sticks overlapped each other. I really like this photo, but it was a bit rushed, one thing i’d try to change on it, is the fg. I’m not a big fan of that tall grass poking through the bottom of the frame. Maybe next time!
By then the sun had risen and some of the fog had went away, so we thought we were done and good to go back home. On the road back quite a bit of fog came back and the sun started bursting through the thick layers of fog, there was this single big tree by the road, I had to stop and try to capture it. I used my trusty Yashica 50mm F1.8 lens, this lens is my number 1 favorite, I just love how the bokeh is produced and how it wall melts together.
These next two images were taken in an interval of less than 10min apart. They are of each side of this small bridge, I wanted to capture the stillness of it all, it looked almost frozen in time.