This image was taken recently at Depot Beach on the NSW south coast. I’d spent Christmas camping there amongst the spotted gums. The last morning started warm and sunny – and then suddenly this rolled in. I don’t think I’d ever seen such thick fog when it wasn’t either cold weather or up in the mountains – certainly not my usual mental image of summer at the beach. I overheard someone say it was a sea fog.
A quick bit of searching shows this is indeed the case. Sea Fog is in fact the most common form of Advection Fog, which is caused by walm, moist air being slowly blown accross a cool surface (the sea). While this is not all that common in eastern Australia, in some locations it is – think of all those images you’ve seen of the Golden Gate Bridge surrounded by fog – that’s sea fog.
My search also turned up this well known painting by Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840). I’ve seen images of this painting before – but I hadn’t remembered the title – “Wanderer above the sea of fog”
Of course that’s more likely to be radiation fog than advection fog but I figure that a) you don’t really care about the technicalities of fog and b) It was a good enough excuse to slip Casper in. I figure if you like fog, you may well enjoy the work of CDF too. Here’s one that most likely is sea fog. This is one of my favourites – though there’s no fog.
Tags: art, beach, camping, Casper David Friedrich, fog
art out and about 
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