Above the clouds lay islands of gold. Oak and maple trees are set ablaze by the morning light as the sun rises over the nearby mountains.

On foggy mornings like these, there’s nothing I love more than getting the drone up in the air. It allows for a unique bird’s-eye perspective of the landscape below, often giving the clouds an ocean-like appearance.

The fog gracefully washes over the hills and valleys before being evaporated by the rising sun. Within an hour of taking this photo, there was not a cloud in sight, which goes to show the importance of timing and efficiency for images like these.

While this photo gives off a minimalist appearance at first, the finer details in the tree line combined with the patterns within the cloud formations make this one of my favorite aerial images to this day.