The sun was battling the fog, with the line of the coast the demilitarized zone. First the fog bank standing out to sea would ride in, covering the shore. Then the sun would strike back, burning off the fog and revealing the sea cliffs with clarity.

I stood at the bottom of a steep stair-and-ladder, watching the waves at high-tide and the play of fog, sun, and shore. Clearly, the scene lacked color—so I envisioned a monochromatic image from the get-go.

It was a little hard to compose my photo, because I was facing into the sunlight and the fog made the atmosphere thick and hard to see through. I did my best.

I radically underexposed compared to an average light reading. In processing, for my first pass at RAW conversion I lightened up the file considerably, by about 2 f-stops. Then I did a second pass through Adobe Camera RAW (ACR), this time with darker exposure values. I layered in portions of this darker pass to reveal details and structure in the sun, trees, and cliff.

Exposure data: 26mm, 1/1250 of a second at f/13 and ISO 200, hand held.