It was the first morning in three where the fog had lifted and when my weather app said it was clear out, I took that as a sign to head to the lake and watch the sun rise into a new day.
The past couple of mornings were greeted by varying thicknesses of fog and while I did manage to get some decent pics, like this one below, photographically each adventure was heavily muted:
That was yesterday morning at Lake Mirror in Lakeland. And the orange glow was essentially the fog dispersing the lights around the lake.
But this morning the air was clear and as in that old Barbara Streisand song, “on a clear day you can see forever”… and that is what it felt like.
In reality, when I first got to the Lake Parker, all I could see was a distant lit shore line surrounded by darkness.
My camera on the other hand nailed shot after shot of detail that was beyond the scope of my eyes.
That first shot below is actually near-total-darkness to my eyes, but the camera captured a ton of stars in a sky that almost looked like daylight.
I am obviously loving the A7 and it has me continuously going out early to flex its low-light-sensitivity … so forgive me.
Anyway, the images from this morning are at the end of this blog and it shows the progression over a timeline of about 45 minutes. Hope you enjoy!
As I drove home, my soul was full of the joys of life and I mused over the whole concept of the fog lifting and how it affects us in so many ways.
In a literal sense, the fog lifting allowed the camera to see clearly and find definition. Cameras struggle to see through fog and while they can indeed produce a decent picture or two, color variations and saturations are lost to a certain degree. They wash out some colors and the strongest colors tend to dominate the images.
In a life-sense, the fog lifting has a very similar aspect of relief to it. Fog is generally a confusion or a sense of being overwhelmed to where it is difficult to see very far ahead.
Variables that fog us in, often have us wandering lost without progress as we struggle to make sense of what is going on. Issues take on a more sinister feel and might even present themselves as insurmountable. But this is only because we can’t see past them.
John Carpenter’s movie “The Fog” used the rolling thick fog to hide unspeakable terrors and much of the horror for the characters was caused by being unable to see what they were dealing with.
When we are unable to objectively see what we are dealing with in life, how then are we able to develop an approach to remedy it? Such is fog.
But there is a clarity that comes with being finally beyond the reaches of the fog and this clarity allows us to assess what issues we are dealing with and even see a path beyond them.
Sometimes, it is difficult to see beyond a heavy issue as it becomes all consuming and fogs us in. For example, severe health issues or even a strong toothache can take control of our mind to where we are literally unable to think of anything else other than the matter at hand.
If we are fortunate enough to have good people around us, they take over and deal with the other things that need to be, until our own issues have subsided to where we can begin to take control again.
But sometimes, we don’t have anyone and more often than not, things then fall off the table. And we have to let them go. And later when we look back at ourselves, we have to forgive ourselves for them having fallen.
We are only human. We do not have multi-tasking processors that can distribute its processing power regardless of the challenge.
Even in real fog, where we can equip ourselves with fog lamps and fog horns, these tools are primarily so that others can see us or be aware we are there. They don’t help us see through the fog.
So, in times like this it is important to recognize that time itself is likely the only cure.
Mental fog can be a very limiting restraint on us and there are times when we just have to wait it out and let the winds of change blow some clarity back into our lives.
… just a thought!
