You step outside and Prague is gone. From the bridge you see two arches, from the tower just the tip, from the embankment three lamps. The rest has vanished into white. You know the feeling: this isn’t the day you were looking forward to.
It is. It just looks different.
Fog takes half the city away and gives the other half weight. Suddenly a tower, a lamp and a stretch of bridge are enough. Nothing else crowds into the frame, because you simply can’t see it.
Prague has no better atmosphere to give.
In sunshine you shoot the same thing as thousands of people before you. There are only a few foggy mornings a year and no two look alike. A photo from one of them is rarer than anything you bring home from a nice day. So no disappointment. Go.
And enjoy it. Put on music that suits the fog, or an audiobook, and walk through old Prague as if no one else were in it. The photos will come by themselves.
Where to go comes down to one question: do you want to go down into the fog, or get above it?
Down means the river. From Jiráskův or Palackého most you have lamps, car lights, silhouettes of walkers and the opposite bank appearing and disappearing. You don’t need a panorama. Let the bridge end in white, wait for one figure and don’t explain what’s behind it.
Up means Letná, by the Metronome or the Hanavský Pavilion, or the Vyšehrad ramparts. When the fog sits in the valley and you stand above it, towers, roofs and distant hills rise out of the white.
Sometimes, though, you get to the top and can’t see the other side of the path. That’s not a mistake. You’re just standing in the same cloud as the whole of Prague.
That’s the moment to stop waiting for the view and move closer. Fog likes things within reach: a wet branch, a lamp, a railing, a runner at the edge of the path. Everything further away loses colour and contrast. The tree in front of you is dark, the next one lighter, the third barely there. Fog draws the depth for you; you just mustn’t spoil it.
Your camera has a different opinion of a white scene than you do. The automatic mode pulls it towards grey and the shot comes out darker than the morning looked. Add a little exposure and make sure the bright areas keep their detail. Focus on the edge of a lamp or on a figure, not on emptiness; if the camera hunts helplessly back and forth, switch to manual. And bring a cloth — drops on the lens make a haze you didn’t ask for.
Bring three photos back from the walk: something that fades away — a bridge, a path, a row of lamps; a dark silhouette in plenty of empty space; and a close, wet detail where the weather really shows.
One more thing: in fog, drivers and trams can’t see you, and a photographer dressed in grey practically merges with the weather at dawn. A reflective strip won’t help the photo, but it makes the walk home better. Leave the drone at home; you’re not allowed to fly it without keeping it in sight.
Next time you wake up to a white window, you won’t be wondering whether it’s worth getting up. Prague gives you a day like this only a few times a year.