The last time we sent photographer Tom Cross to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, we got absolutely owned by the fog. As is the case every time.

Almost every time.

For SpaceX's SARah-1 mission, we rolled the dice yet again on covering the launch and landing, and with some skills, learned lessons, and a dash of luck, we captured the Falcon 9. Check out our shots below with commentary from Tom.

There is a foggy dilemma for every photographer. Do you gamble staying nearby to get a close-up shot of the launch or travel an hour away to drive up a mountain to get above the fog and capture the landscape?

One way around that decision is to set up remote cameras at the launch pad, but there's usually not enough time to travel back to the base for the convoy to collect those cameras. And sometimes those remote camera shots just don’t work out, like last time.

The press site is about 3 miles away with a view of the launch and the landing pad. The fog was noticeably burning off T-60 minutes while setting up for launch. A half-dozen photographers were there, three of them for the Space Force with insanely large 800mm and 1000mm lenses.

At T-20 minutes, the entire area was enveloped in fog and visibility was about 1000 yards in front of you.

SpaceX has the closest cameras to the pad, and on their webcast, the cameras could barely see the rocket. The landing zone view looked promising, however. And nowadays, that's the money shot.

At T-0, it wasn’t visibly clear if the rocket had launched as we couldn't see any flames through the three miles of ground clouds. The Falcon's nine engines then crackled with an intensity that I haven't heard in a long time. It was loud.

Learning lessons from previous missions, I developed some ‘fog settings’ to compensate for the interference. Fewer exposure stops did the trick, and 50% of the remotes succeeded. I placed two cameras on the hill to capture the launch and two on the road to capture the landing.

Only the landing remotes delivered results.