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Filmmaker Spends 2 Years Chasing S.F. Fog, Creates Magical Video

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What happens when you spend countless early mornings hiking national parkland to capture just the right moment? For photographer Simon Christen, it's a love letter to the San Francisco Bay area's fog. To me, his missive is a soft whisper, convincing me to head out to the hills north of the city at dawn.

Christen's spot, the Marin Headlands in Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is part of the second most visited national park unit in the country. Urban parks like this can offer millions access within minutes of leaving home and he exemplifies someone taking advantage of that fully. "For about 2 years," he writes on Vimeo about his film, "if the weather looked promising, I would set my alarm to 5am ... and then set off on the 45-minute drive ... "

Not all trips were successful, despite a scientific system he devised to guess when fog would flow like a silk over hills set to creamsicle sunrises: "I spent many mornings hiking in the dark to only find that the fog was too high, too low, or already gone by the time I got there."

Coy as she can be, Mother Nature eventually rewarded Christen's patience -- many times, in fact -- which he beautifully shares in the above video called "Adrift."

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