Lorenzo Montezemolo

His photos of summer fog in California and the Northern Lights in Scandinavia have made Lorenzo Montezemolo a favourite on social media image-sharing sites. He shares his story with Keith Wilson…

- Keith Wilson

On 17 august last year, Lorenzo Montezemolo made a long-exposure image of wave-like fog creeping over the forested hills of Marin county in California. after he posted the image, Fog Fingers (previous page), on his Flickr page, it went viral, and it has since been published on the front pages of Reddit, Petapixel, Bored panda, Boing Boing and even the Washington post. But this sudden wave of popularity and social media attention has not gone to his head – photography may be Lorenzo’s passion, but it remains very much a hobby…

You live in a very picturesque part of the United states. what is the area like and what possibilities does it offer for your photography? 

I live in northern California, about 30 miles south of San Francisco – which is really beautiful itself – and I’m within an hour of Marin County, where I spent a lot of my time last year shooting fog up in the hills. Within an hour I can also reach the coast, where I have this rocky coastline that is beautiful to drive along and take pictures of. A few hours in the other direction I have the Sierra Nevada Mountains where you can find Yosemite National Park, King’s Canyon, Mono Lake, Lake Tahoe, places like that. I’m really blessed to have all of these different kinds of climates and subjects really close by and so accessible.

You mention Marin county and the pictures of low-lying fog that you’ve taken there. is this a theme you are still pursuing?