Without light and atmosphere, landscape motifs often remain flat and lifeless. Not every capture brings those two important elements along, but we can enhance them like a landscape painter, or work them in afterwards.
As landscape photographers, most of us love autumn with its foggy atmosphere. Especially in forest photography, we welcome it. The reason is that it creates atmosphere, reduces unimportant details and creates a kind of canvas on which foreground elements automatically better stand out from the background. When in addition sunbeams break through, we are getting euphoric.
Atmosphere plus light - this mixture makes landscape pictures interesting at any time of year. So, do we always need to wait for fog or hazy conditions to bring home atmospheric images? Of course not! We can help ourselves with targeted image editing to give our pictures more depth and interest.
The role of depth in an image
From a physical point of view, a photograph has a two-dimensional surface without any depth. As landscape photographers, we are therefore challenged to give our motif a convincing depth effect. We can achieve this with transitions: from large objects in the foreground to small objects in the background, from cold to warm colors, from strong to less strong contrasts, from shadow to light, and from more clarity to less clarity respectively haze or fog.
Atmosphere creates distance
Atmospheric mood is an important factor for image depth: the tiny dust and water vapor particles floating in the air cause clouding. Therefore, objects further away show less detail and contrast as well as less color saturation. We intuitively understand that objects obscured by haze must be further away than those that are clearer to see.
Understanding and internalizing this rule is important, because it automatically lets us take a major step forward in our editing process. We can make use of this physical truth by giving our images more depth and making objects such as mountains or trees appear to be further away.
Light and shadow for three-dimensionality
Light and shadow also enhance the depth of a picture. If objects such as hills or mountains show a shaded as well as an illuminated side, the three-dimensional effect will increase. Furthermore, light also attracts our attention as viewers. Our eyes automatically wander to the brightest spot respectively the spot with the strongest contrast.
Dodging and burning (lightening and darkening) are the necessary means to enhance spatial impressions of objects and surfaces. Both methods can be used in Adobe Photoshop, for example via brushing in "Soft Light" or "Overlay" mode. Trial and error might be required to achieve credible results.
Reinforce, not force in
For the way I approach editing, painting with light and atmosphere is one of the most important steps. And I don't mean adding new objects via any AI engine, but the targeted enhancement or incorporation of light, shadow and atmosphere (such as haze and fog). This usually works best when some of it already was in the image beforehand - and certainly not every image is suitable. A blue sky image will most probably never become atmospheric, whatever you may try.
Atmosphere by brush
In Adobe Lightroom or the Adobe Camera Raw filter in Photoshop, the "Dehaze" slider can be dragged into the negative range. This effect can be intensified by also lowering the contrast slider, pulling up the blacks and/or increasing the brightness. Use the brush to increase or enhance haze or fog over selected background areas or objects. An opacity of 5 to 10 percent - or even less - is often sufficient.
It's the combination that does it
I usually use a mixture of brightness, haze (negative "haze removal") and Gaussian blur for a little blur - similar to the Orton effect - to create more atmosphere when editing. If I intensify light coming from the side or front, I also use blurring, brightness and add a little warmth to the light via white balance. As usually, the trial and error method does it.
Have lots of fun and many atmospheric images!