01.12.25: Rocks through fog

Visitors to the Bastei stand on an observation platform surrounded by fog. The Bastei is a rock formation rising about 650 feet above the Elbe River (or about 1,000 feet above sea level) in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains near Rathen, Germany.

Visitors to the Bastei stand on an observation platform surrounded by fog. The Bastei is a rock formation rising about 650 feet above the Elbe River (or about 1,000 feet above sea level) in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains near Rathen, Germany.

Weather hinders once-in-lifetime visit

The rock formations became shadows in the fog. But I photographed them anyway, trying to make the fog work in the images I captured. In some cases it did. In most cases it didn’t.

‍After my many years of photography there’s one sad lesson I’ve learned: If I have an opportunity to photograph a one-time, got-to-be-that-day, can’t-be-rescheduled event, the weather is going to screw it up. And I can’t control the weather.

‍Super moon? Overcast. Historic meteor shower? Overcast. Eclipse? Overcast.

‍It never fails.

‍That’s the reason I don’t bother planning to photograph any exciting celestial events. I know months in advance that the weather, no matter my location, will screw it up.

‍A couple of years ago I learned that Pat’s Theory of Bad Photo Weather also applies to one-time travel opportunities.

‍My wife and I scheduled a Viking River Cruise through the Czech Republic and Germany, starting in Prague and ending in Berlin. The itinerary included some very interesting sites — and sights — but one morning on the schedule captured my attention. We were going to visit the Bastei, a rock formation rising about 650 feet above the Elbe River (or about 1,000 feet above sea level) in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains near Rathen, Germany. The jagged rocks of the Bastei were formed by water erosion over one million years ago.

‍I had seen photos of the Bastei and knew this was a fun opportunity to get some nice travel landscape photographs of a geologic treasure that I would likely never see again. I studied online info on the Bastei, gaining an understanding of the direction of morning sunlight that time of year so I could make tentative plans for photography. I packed lenses that would best allow me to get the type of photos I wanted. I was ready.

‍I awoke early that morning and looked out the window of our cabin on the Viking longship. A steady drizzle was falling, but we still had a couple of hours before we would leave the boat to board the buses. Maybe it would clear.

‍As we boarded the buses, a steady drizzle still fell. On the bus ride up the mountain the drizzle was joined by fog. By the time we arrived at the site visibility was probably less than a quarter mile.

‍The rock formations became shadows in the fog. But I photographed them anyway, trying to make the fog work in the images I captured. In some cases it did. In most cases it didn’t.

‍This was one that worked. 

‍I could see some people on an observation platform through the fog in the distance and could somewhat make out a rock formation to my left, but fluctuations in the density of the fog would randomly obscure the rocks. I focused on the observation platform, framed the shot to include the area where the rocks were supposed to be and waited for the rocks to reappear. It took a few minutes and the observation deck disappeared a couple of times, but eventually the rocks slowly reappeared through a lighter patch of fog. I clicked off a couple of shots before the rocks vanished again.

‍It’s not the type of photo I had hoped for when we scheduled the trip, but it’s better than what I expected with the weather.

‍We spent a couple of hours in the cold, dreary conditions before grabbing some hot chocolate in the Panoramarestaurant (panoramic restaurant) overlooking the Elbe, which was somewhere underneath the fog. Then we returned to the bus.

‍About an hour later, after we had reboarded the boat and were preparing to leave the dock, the sun broke through the clouds.

‍I could have predicted that.

‍Tech specs

  • Date/time: Apr 21, 2022 10:43 AM   
  • Camera: Canon EOS 7D Mark II
  • Lens: EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM 
  • Focal length: 28mm
  • Aperture: f/4.5
  • Shutter: 1/4000 second
  • ISO: 400