With the forecasted cool nights ahead, I planned on trying some moon-lit fog scenes from the hills in Western Iowa. I couldn't fall asleep till like midnight, then woke up at 2:30. "Yay." I glanced over some obs and decided to leave early. There was nice river and low fog as I crossed into Iowa around 3:30. Then I drove out of it. Dang it! I get to Murray Hill around 4 a.m. and convince myself to walk up the hill in the dark. It's not as bad once you are up there, given there is a full moon anyway and some light. It's convincing yourself to do it in the first place that sucks. The coyotes or whatever barking and yelping to my south didn't help though. I wouldn't think there would be many in this area, but maybe there are. Sure sounded like them. Anyway, there wasn't much fog yet, other than right along the river. The above image is actually the Cargil plant back in town, at least 20 miles in a straight line from here. Or right around 20 miles. Taken at 400mm. It's not terribly sharp. I didn't think it looked that neat at the time, so I didn't mess with it much. I was likely shooting it just seeing what there was for fog that direction.

Looking west now, towards Tekamah across the river. Moon-lit fog rules from above. The moon was full by the way. You get some cool shades going from black to white, with the trees not in the light, to the fog that is. I think I was ISO'd up to 200 on most of these, with a shutter around a minute or so.

I knew the name of this river at one point. Maybe it is the Soldier River. I need much colder nights with a full moon! That could look highly amazing with more fog coming off the river. Of course it gets too cold and you aren't going to be able to go up there to take the pictures. You can get river steam all winter long, but it has to be near or below zero to do it then.

Those buildings are at "River Sioux", which doesn't seem to be a town, more of an area of a couple buildings and a couple houses right before Little Sioux. It's right next to the interstate.

Here is an exposure showing more of how it looked like with one's eyes at the time.

Longer exposure just brightens things right up. You can see a semi drove through on I29 in this one. The Missouri River is just on the other side of the trees, past the semi lights.

The scene towards the rising sun was getting nice now too. You quickly get into a panic kind of mode, on which way to shoot, which way to shoot. I think that car turned it's brights on there towards the left side. I thought I saw it at the time, now I'm rather certain, as I don't see how else it would look like that.

It's now mostly twilight-lit scenes, as the moon lowers and it gets lighter out.

As it gets closer to sunrise, the fog really starts to thicken. Wish it would get that done sooner one of these mornings!

Moon getting quite red as it sets into the foggy murk. Couple car streaks on I29 now. The shutter can't be very long when zoomed in on the moon, thing moves so fast it blurs.

Longer shutter on the moon. It vanished into the murk quickly after this one, long before it got to the horizon. It was no where near that bright in this one. Doubt I could make the bottom out at all at this point. Higher ISO and longer shutter brings it out. Shutter may have been 10 seconds, somewhere around that.   Continue to Page 2