Fog

I am partial to a good fog. Last Saturday, there was a lovely one. From Brooklyn Bridge Park, Manhattan was a dark smudge at water level; the moving smudge was the Staten Island Ferry. It lifted by the time I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, but returned as I rounded down the Hudson side. That was quite satisfying. But yesterday, ah, that was a glorious pea-souper, like the kind I remember from Nantucket. Manhattan was absolutely invisible; the SI Ferry could only be heard. From the end of Pier 5, Brooklyn was also shrouded. It was a perfect day to see the Mary Celeste, or the Flying Dutchman, come sailing into the harbor, not that they could ever dock…

A good thick fog doesn’t make for any kind of a photograph; it’s only after the stuff starts to lift that interesting things appear. Saturday was a wet, windy day. Here I’m looking towards New Jersey from Battery Park City: from left to right are the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Liberty Science Center, and Colgate Clock. Click on this for a larger study in grey. Yesterday, the Manhattan Bridge. There are several kinds of fog, depending on conditions and terrain, but all of them are essentially clouds — suspensions of tiny water droplets — close to the surface. Sitting amidst an estuary, bordering an ocean, NYC is in a sweet spot to be socked in when cooler air meets the warmer, and moister, ground or water, and vice versa. This Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) below the Brooklyn Bridge is the tallest tree in the park. I added some antiquing, edge blurring, and fading filters to this one for a change of pace. Fog brings out the antiquarian in me. The Inner Borough, meanwhile, kept materializing and dematerializing, as if it was stuck in a faulty transporter.