Happy 4th of July to all our American friends. All the best and beautiful photographs.

I captured this image a few days ago on a Sunday morning. Early morning. Way too early in the morning. It was the end of June and the sunrise was shortly after 5:30 am. Did I mention that it was too early ? Actually, it wasn’t a plan. The plan was to sleep in, spend most of the day doing nothing or as little as possible (that’s my specialty) and then go out in the evening to take a few pictures. All that changed when I checked weather forecast the day before. One of them, I think it was the Weather Canada site, mentioned patches of fog the next morning. Well, I couldn’t resist. I absolutely love to shoot in fog. This is an element that often makes images better. The only problem was that I had to get up at 3:30 am. That’s quite early. Did I mention that before ?

I decided that I was going to visit the area I scouted a few years ago, called: Fletcher Creek Forest Swamp, shown on the map below by the red dot. It is close to Cambridge, On., approximately 50 km west of Toronto.

I believe that it is also called Beverly Swamp. But I may be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. And likely not the last. Anyhow, to get to the swamp you need to find the trail-head for Lafarge 2000 Trail. It’s not very easy to see but it is very close to the intersection of Gore and Maddaugh Roads. Look closely and you should be able to see the sign. Follow the trail, which turns into a boardwalk after 100 meters, cross the wetlands and there you are. You found it.

When I arrived to the area where I wanted to photograph the air was quite clear, there were no signs of fog. Luckily for me, after 30 minutes a fog patch rolled in making the scene very mysterious and enchanting.

In terms of post processing, it was actually very simple. In Lightroom I increased contrast a little bit, added Clarity and Vibrance and painted a delicate vignette. I was also after a “fairy tale” look so I decided to shift green hue a tiny little bit towards yellow part of the spectrum. As far as the local adjustments are concerned, I only increased contrast and a bit of saturation in the logs in the foreground. The biggest change was with the image crop. The original picture is shown below. As you can see, there was another log close to where I was standing. I felt that it was significantly changing the balance of composition. That log and a lot of shady tree reflections were making the image less “fairy tale” and more “sinister”. In a way, the darker areas of the picture were overpowering the more subtle and foggy portion.