Clouds

The other night as Ann and I were getting things together at the end of the day Ann said, “Dan, come take a look at this sky!”  And what a sky it was!

We haven’t done a lot of real photography lately, and certainly haven’t really taken our time to make great images.  But this sky did call on me to pull out my phone and start thinking about images.

Perhaps the best thing I love about our iPhone 11s is that there are separate lenses so we can change focal lengths while photographing with the phone. 

And on an evening like that one, with such a variety of clouds in the sky, that allows you to make more than one image and not make it too obvious that all of them were taken from the small 18” balcony that extends from our bedroom.  (Ann says it’s a “French balcony” and since she’s always right, I’ll go with that).

It wasn’t quite the diversity of my full set of digital camera lenses, but being able to switch focal lengths,

and change directions somewhat,

and change orientation, not to mention take advantage of the rapidly changing light,

really gave me the opportunity to work with a subject that I knew wasn’t going to be around for very long. 

And sure enough, after about 10 minutes, the color had left the clouds, and post-sunset was starting to give a flat light.  I was hoping for a bit of the mysterious colored skies that will often come just after sunset (like just before sunrise, though a bit different), but it was not to be.  There was actually a bit of haze over Braga and the mountains that kept that from happening.  

It’s moments like that, moments of incredible beauty that inspire one to do something with it, that nudge us forward, reminding us that sometime soon, we need to return to image making because we simply have to.  It’s a friendly reminder of why we have structured our lives to be this way and is part of the reason we are here and not elsewhere.

Ann and I love clouds and we were fearful that Braga would be a blue sky disappointment.  There was no reason to fear.  And Braga’s beautiful clouds don’t only appear at sunset.

A few days later on our morning walk we saw the setting full moon in a sky full of poofs that really looked more like brush strokes than clouds.

Well, it’s been a bit between when I wrote this and actually posted it, so here are a couple of more cloud shots I took since loading the post.

With the cooler weather we’ve had these past few days, we’ve been having more and more clouds, which is a good thing.  Even when the overhead skies are clear, it seems like there are clouds along the horizon.

Yeah, Braga does clouds.