Foggy Mornings Photography by Martin Hoffmann is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2026 Bronze A' Design Award in Photography and Photo Manipulation Design Competition Category.
BronzePhotography· 2026
Foggy Mornings Photography
Client: Hoffmann Design
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Photography Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #181722The Design
About Foggy Mornings Photography
The photo series Foggy Mornings explores the seemingly unattractive and depressive qualities of a dark season dominated by omnipresent grey. Through a deliberate confrontation with fog covered, often low contrast scenery, the project develops a calm and atmospheric aesthetic. Reduced light, subtle colour nuances and clear composition transform supposedly unappealing motifs into poetic visual spaces, opening up a new, reconciliatory perception of the surroundings. Each image tells a story while leaving room for personal reflection.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Foggy Mornings Photography is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Foggy Mornings Photography is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Foggy Mornings Photography splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
It is a photographic journey of discovery right on one’s doorstep, involving a conscious confrontation with the previously negative impressions of a dark, foggy season in order to develop new, more pleasant perspectives from it.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
The seemingly bleak, grey, and shapeless is deliberately brought into focus in order to visualize a calm, atmospheric aesthetic through reduced motifs and subtle visual and color moods. The photographic exploration connects external circumstances with inner emotional states, creating new and reconciliatory perspectives that invite an inner reconciliation with the grey days.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
The photographs are intended as part of a photo book featuring impressions and snapshots that represent both an exploration of and a declaration of love for this region.
Grand Interview
The Bronze A' Design Award recognition for Foggy Mornings Photography, granted through one of the most internationally respected juried design competitions, affirms what many who encounter this series will sense immediately: that you have managed to turn what most photographers would avoid into something quietly compelling and emotionally resonant. Is there a particular image within Foggy Mornings Photography that you feel most fully captures your original vision for the series, and what is the story behind the moment that image was made?
My favourite is the main image: the view from the hilltop, past the bare trees standing on the right, down into the landscape that spreads out hazily before me. When I turned round during a morning run after a steep climb, this view presented itself – a wall of mist instead of a distant vista (which was, of course, to be expected). However, despite all the negative associations that the leaden mist evokes in me, this moment felt different: calm, gentle, conciliatory. The lack of a view into the distance opened up a view within.
There is a growing conversation among photographers, visual artists, and psychologists alike about the relationship between environmental mood and human emotional wellbeing, and Foggy Mornings Photography sits at the very heart of that dialogue by proposing that grey, fog-laden winter days deserve not just our tolerance but our genuine attention and appreciation. In what ways do you believe Foggy Mornings Photography can contribute to a broader cultural shift in how people emotionally process the overcast, low-light months of the year, and have you observed any such shift in the responses of those who have already encountered the work?
Fortunately, we can’t change the weather. We have to make the best of it, and everyone finds their own way through these dark times – sometimes weary of the darkness and greyness, sometimes actually enjoying it. Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to talk of a cultural shift. Viewers were consistently very impressed and said that the pictures had a positive effect on them. In particular, they appreciated the soft, gentle rendering in various shades of colour.
Foggy Mornings Photography was realised using a fixed 28mm lens with a wide maximum aperture, a choice that many photographers would consider unconventional for landscape or atmospheric work where zoom flexibility and depth of field control are typically prioritised. How did the constraints of working with a fixed focal length shape the compositional thinking behind Foggy Mornings Photography, and in what ways did that limitation ultimately become a creative asset rather than a restriction when confronting fog-covered, low-contrast scenery?
The camera, a Leica Q3, changes the way subjects are viewed thanks to its fixed 28mm lens. This limitation gives rise to different approaches to composition, lines of tension, and the choice and interplay between foreground and background. Whenever I have the time or opportunity, I often change my position to achieve the right composition and framing. Furthermore, the fast Leica lens, with its outstanding sharpness, offers an excellent opportunity to get the most out of the technical possibilities, particularly in low-light situations. Depending on the subject, the aperture was deliberately set to a medium/smaller opening (f/6.3, f/7.1) or a larger opening (f/3.2 or f/4).
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The photo series develops a new perspective on dark, overcast winter weather in a fog-prone region by deliberately placing the seemingly dull, grey and formless at the center of attention. Through reduced motifs and subtle visual moods, a calm, atmospheric aesthetic emerges that invites an inner reconciliation with the grey days. The photographic approach connects external landscape and inner emotional states, opening up new, more contemplative ways of seeing.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The photographs currently exist in digital form as raw DNG and jpg files. 9520 x 6336 px at 300 dpi, RGB in DNG format (Display P3) and in jpg format (sRGB IEC61966-2.1). The resolution of 60 megapixels allows for a wide range of further applications. Wall pictures in approx. 40 x 40 cm format. As part of a photo book in DIN A4 210 x 297 mm or 210 x 210 mm format.
- Tags
- Photography, foggy scenes, colour nuances, contrast levels, dynamic range, moments of tranquillity, sensitivity, aesthetics, morning atmosphere
- Production Technology
- The photographs were taken during specific photo tours on various foggy winter mornings in the Ulm and Neu-Ulm region. Camera: Leica Q3, fixed lens Summilux 1:1.7/28 mm, post-processing with Adobe Lightroom (corrections, presets) and Photoshop if necessary.
- Design Challenge
- The challenge lay in the external conditions: diffuse light, low contrast and a gloomy atmosphere make it difficult to render subjects as they are perceived. Secondly, viewers tend to be more interested in images that do not necessarily depict grey, foggy conditions and gloomy days. This required a very sensitive perception of subjects, nuances, details and image sections. In post-processing, it was crucial to carefully add appeal to the grey areas with the finest colour nuances.
- Research
- The design research examines how expressive photographs can be created despite fog. The aim is to enable a new and more nuanced experience of a scene that is often perceived as dreary. Methodology: Careful observation, conscious choice of perspective, location, light and contrasts, as well as targeted, sensitive post-processing result in calm, atmospheric images. The result shows how adverse conditions can be used to achieve appealing results that can change one's own perceptions through their sensitive presentation.
- Inspiration
- The inspiration arose from consciously engaging with a deeply foggy, grey season in order to discover new perspectives. The starting point was the creative challenge of transforming low-contrast, seemingly unphotogenic motifs into their own visual presence. The inherent reduction of light and colour lends itself to motifs with pastel nuances, compositions with contrasting tones and certain details. The quiet tranquillity of the scenery is brought out and a subtle beauty is revealed.
- Project Duration
- The initial ideas for this project emerged in November 2025. In January and February 2026, the photographs were taken at various locations in Ulm and Neu-Ulm, Germany.
- Operation Flow
- The photos are intended as part of a picture book with impressions and snapshots as an exploration of and declaration of love for this region. The photographs convey scenes, characteristics or moods that are typical of this area. In their normality, perhaps also unusual for others. In this case, the seasonally dominant theme of fog is depicted in nuanced and not unpleasant photographs. Each image tells a story and, at the same time, allows room for personal feelings.
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Photographer Martin Hoffmann, A Morning in Minor Key, 2026
Image #2: Photographer Martin Hoffmann, A Morning in Minor Key, 2026
Image #3: Photographer Martin Hoffmann, A Morning in Minor Key, 2026
Image #4: Photographer Martin Hoffmann, A Morning in Minor Key, 2026
Image #5: Photographer Martin Hoffmann, A Morning in Minor Key, 2026
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