Out of the Fog
You get a lot of rain and a lot of snow—and on certain days in August you'd swear there was steam hovering over the streets of Manhattan—but the one thing you don't see too much of in the city is fog. On an early Spring day a few years ago, Mitchell Funk saw the fog from his apartment windows, loaded up his gear and headed for the fountain in Central Park. "I know the park very well," Mitchell says. "I don't live too far from it, and I've done a lot of photography there. I knew exactly where I had to go."
And when he got there, he knew what he had to do: wait. "I set up under the arches, with the camera on a tripod and a fast film—Provia 400—loaded in the camera, and I waited for the right moment." As people passed he clicked off an occasional frame. Then, all of a sudden, there it was: the composition, the light, the red umbrella. Perfect.
After the fact, Mitchell used Photoshop to strengthen the output of the overhead lights a bit. His camera that day was an F5, the lens an 80-200mm f/2.8D ED AF Zoom-Nikkor. He used the camera's Matrix meter to read the scene, and then went a half stop over the reading in a quick bracket to bring up the lights.
The gear plays its part—the accuracy of the meter, the sharpness of the lens—but this photograph is really about recognizing the opportunity, knowing what you want to accomplish and having the patience to wait for the right moment.
"It was kind of a magical day," Mitchell says. "I did a lot of work and came up with about three good images."
