This week’s Thinking Photography workshop class was about skies, and since I’ve been going through a lot of images recently, I decided to give them a quick review with the workshop session fresh in my mind to delve into the topic a bit further (face it, I don’t mind “studying”). Come join us for an image-rich review of our “skies” lesson.

I think the workshop is coming at a great time for us. Ann and I are going through and organizing our images for a number of reasons - Ann’s doing the grueling culling of Capture One images I did when we first converted from Lightroom to Capture One, and both of us are reviewing our developed images with the idea of working them into an iPad portfolio application as well as a revamping of the website with more recent images in the galleries (we haven’t added any images since we set it up other than through blog posts). That meant I was familiar with the range of images I’ve produced and could readily relate to some of my own images as Charlie discussed the image he was sharing on the zoom screen.

At first I decided to simply work my way through the annual folders and select an image per year to analyze and discuss. The first workshop session was about relationships between elements of the image, but was also about thinking critically about images and analyzing what worked in an image and what didn’t. So that’s what I’m doing with this week’s theme. I may not have stuck fully with the calendar approach, but pretty much so in the first part of the post.

My first image is, in some ways, I believe is one of my best images. It is significant for many reasons, not the least because it was the first image that convinced me that digital photography had arrived and I should just dive into it. It’s also one of the first images I took with my Fuji x100, made more as an afterthought with the newly purchased camera and done hand-held after I’d photographed the subject with my tripod-mounted medium format film camera and another camera I had, and which began my love affair with Fuji (Ann’s looking at me right now like I need a bit of “help”). But the subject of the session (and post) is skies, and usually that means clouds, and this image has them.

Charlie explained that often it is the cloud that is not within the image frame that has the most impact on the image itself and this is a wonderful example of that. The deep shadow that is cast behind the painted hills is rendered by a cloud way off to my left. And the fact that the cloud was sculpted means that as you move from right to left in that middle part of the image it changes from dark to somewhat lit in the valley, but with the ridge top still in shadow.

The bright sunlight in the foreground area is what creates both the brilliantly lit painted hills as well as the deep shadows that form the bottom edge of the frame, which keeps your eye from moving outside of the frame of the image.

As for the skies. I’ve always thought that the bright lit cloud on the left hand side helps balance the well-lit hills to the bottom right. If the clouds in the sky were reversed, I think the image would weigh too heavily to the right. I also think the bright lit field and the softly lit ridge add complexity and beauty to the image. That is the result of off-frame clouds.

The other images taken in this sequence, as well as the medium format film and m4/3 digital images that preceded this exposure have very different - and unsatisfying - clouds and shadowing in the background and foreground. The foreground largely remains the same because I wanted it mostly well lit, but the background differs in a way that lessens the impact and complexity of the image.

If I could change anything, it would be the clouds along the top edge of the frame. If the cloud on the top left corner would have dropped down just a bit, as on the right corner, and if the cloud in the middle-left were missing altogether (but please keep the dark one), I might just have to say I’ll never take as perfect an image again. I guess that’s perhaps a good thing then; it allows me to keep photographing!

The next in my annual sequence of images comes from Mamba Point (yeah, there’s a reason for that name) in Liberia. It was taken on the grounds of the old US Embassy looking into the Atlantic Ocean. I remember being captivated originally by the sunset and the distant clouds as they began to glow and reveal their cavities. I had another camera that could zoom in for a tighter image, which I did, focusing on the light playing in the clouds on the horizon. But then I noticed the patterns in the water and the textures in the sky I decided to go to my x100 for a very different type of image. Again, the clouds were changing rapidly so I have several different images with very different cloud patterns above (for some reason the horizon clouds didn’t seem to change much at all.

I think this image works, in part because there are opposing curves - a light backwards C formed by breaks in the clouds and the mirroring C formed by the water currents.

A year later found me on a cold winter’s morning at the Finley National Wildlife Refuge. Here, it was the ground mist and very thin cirrus clouds that gave me enough veiling to shoot into the sun while having the foreground frost shimmer in the light. This image is less about clouds in the sky itself than about the lighting conditions that allows. I stayed in this spot for about half an hour and the various colors and tonal values between the images taken just minutes apart are simply amazing. Each is the result of the conditions the skies afford in combination with the rising sun.

The following year found us on the Oregon coast on a morning that was what Charlie described as “changeable” weather. The weather didn’t change all that much, but the cloud conditions did. As we made our way to the beach, there were high cirrus clouds and everything turned a stunning pastel pink color. Ann and I started photographing immediately right from where the trail hit the beach because we knew it wouldn’t last. It didn’t. Everything then turned an amazing pastel blue - again, several more images before the light changed was in order.

Then the heavy clouds rolled in in a matter of minutes. We put on our wading boots and started photographing at the rock outcropping that had been our planned destination.

Over time the heavy monotone clouds gave way to softer, wispier clouds that started having lighter and darker patches. By this point I was done photographing the rocks and sea life on it unveiled by the receding tide and had turned my attention oceanward with more abstract imagery in mind. As I started making images combining off-shore rocks, ocean and sky - looking for just the right exposure to render the ocean as I’d wanted - it dawned on me the thinning clouds allowed not only different tonal values in the clouds, but different colors of light as well. So I started including more sky in the images. I think one element about why the image below works so well is that subtle patches of red light were able to pass through the clouds and reflect off the water, to create the purplish and blue mixtures of color throughout the image - both in the water and in the sky.

We were again on the coast for the following year’s image. This time down in Bandon. Here it isn’t so much clouds in the sky as it is overnight moisture that allows the skies to refract early morning light into such beautiful colors. And again, the ocean is reflecting that light to add to the image’s brilliance. Because there are no real clouds in the sky, the colors are much more brilliant, both in the sky and reflected in the water. You can see the sunlight just skimming the tops of the Cat and Kittens, and in a few minutes, the moisture in the sky will have burnt off, along with it the colors it holds. Ann and I keep wondering why Bandon seems to have these skies nearly every time we’re there, but they do. They are magical. Just make sure you come before sunrise.

2017’s image comes from Yellowstone and was frustration in the making. I was incredibly conscious of the clouds swiftly moving through the image, so it wasn’t a matter of not paying attention to the clouds. The problems arose from the fact that patches of sunlight were also streaking across the Lamar Valley and the timing of the two never quite worked out the way I’d hoped.

This is the best of the images - where the light illuminates the hillside as I’d hoped, but had not yet hit the valley floor, and there is a distinct cloud pattern above the hill. Unfortunately, the hill isn’t as well lit as I’d hoped, the cloud isn’t positioned quite as nicely as I’d hoped and the upper right corner is a disaster - it leads your eye off the frame.

Perhaps this image is an example of the fact that sometimes things don’t quite work out.

This next image, again from Yellowstone that same year, is cheating a bit. Not only is it from the same year, but it doesn’t even include the sky in it. However, it is a good example of the type of patience and attentiveness that was discussed in the workshop.

I wound up making several dozen images of this due to the changing mist pattern arising from the hot springs. Looking into the sun I knew there would be an interesting effect if I could get the key elements isolated from blowing mist. Those elements included the mid-layer, horizontal tree - namely the vertical branches and their reflection in the pond - the tree to the right (with the tip clearly backlit), and the small tree and stick in the middle also clearly visible. It took some effort and patience, but it finally worked out, and then some. While I’m sure that at the time I was fully conscious of the small tree on the rock in the very upper right corner (gotta check those corners), I’m fortunate that was revealed in this exposure, as well as that the opposite corner being darkened by a gap in the mist. I also think I was fortunate with the way the mist played out on the left half of the frame. Again, I knew that there would be mist arising from a bubbling hole in the rust colored foreground grasses, but luck graced me with a hole in the white mist just above it, each broad area interrupted by a tonally different patch that gives visual texture to the image and that play off each other. I could perhaps have done without the triangular shaped dark patch in the white field in the upper center of the image, but I suspect a viewer might notice that it somewhat resembles the two trees to the right. Overall though, the image is an example of sometimes it does pay to have some patience and to not leaving a location until you’re confident you have the image you want . . . or the conditions change so much that you can no longer get it.

Artist’s Paint Pots, Yellowstone NP, 2017

The next year’s image comes from the Painted Hills and I have to admit that this is the first image I made that opened up a new way of seeing a particular type of image. I honesty cannot say more about the time I made the image than I’d taken a photograph in the other direction (looking a bit more than 90 degrees to my right), and as I was removing the polarizer filter on my camera from the front of the lens and facing into the sun, I looked up the hill and thought, “Wow, that’s interesting . . . I wonder if I can photograph that?” If photography is about learning how to see things in new ways, and for me it is, then this process, if not the image itself, was worth making. I’ve made several such images since, exploring what it means to really look at the landscape in such conditions. Unfortunately, those conditions don’t arise all that often. But when they do . . . I get to work.

Anyway, I think what strikes me the most is the different coloration of the clouds in addition to the effect of shooting into the sun. If I recall, that year there was a fire in the near-by Ochoco National Forest, which is why the sky generally has a warm hue to it (if I recall correctly, our lungs were none too happy that year). The white portion of the sky is where the sun is blaring through enough to provide normal white light. This image is perhaps a good lesson to be attentive to subtle colorations in the sky.

The last image comes from our 2019 fall trip. Charlie mentioned that sometimes you just have to stop and photograph the skies because they put you in awe. That’s what the image below is. We weren’t in a good location for a better landscape image, so I tried my best to isolate distant elements and the powerful clouds above. I don’t think it’s a particularly strong image, and I think that leads to something I realized while I was going through my images. That is, I think I paid much more attention to the sky many years ago than more recently. Yes, as you’ll see below, there are some images where the sky is a focal point, but in some ways I realize that I’ve not paid as much attention to the importance of the sky as a truly integral part of the image. Rather, it was an element that was there to work with, but not to think about as an element on its own. Yes, sometimes we are stuck with what we have due to the time we have at a location, but really, it’s been a few years since I can recall thinking, “Well, if I wait 10 minutes, that cloud from over there should move over here and that would really help the image.” If I can get back to that type of thinking, my images should be the better for it.

Well, that’s it for the calendar approach of looking at skies, so why not analyze a few images based on other things discussed at the workshop. As with the above image, I’m not beyond making a photograph of the sky on its own. Sometimes the sky demands it. The next few images were taken from two consecutive half-days at the Alabama Hills that were simply stunning. Here is just the sky, in all it’s glory the evening we spent there.

On our Saturday morning walk, Ann and I talked about the workshop and about one of the points discussed about blue skies and the use of polarizing filters (and other filters as well). Charlie had noted that one needs to be very attentive to the color of blue that is rendered in the sky in a photograph. What appears normal for a sky really only covers a small spectrum of blue and if your filtration (or manipulation in the digital darkroom) pushes the blue too far in an off color - indigo for example - people will notice it. The point being that your viewer should never think that you’ve manipulated the image. Ann’s question on the walk was along a slightly different vein, “What happens when the skies are so unbelievable that people won’t believe you haven’t manipulated the image. Even those cases where you’ve desaturated the colors because they were so over the top in real life?” Well, that’s the case with the above image. Those were the colors in the sky for just those few minutes. As were the colors in the three images below, taken the following morning over about half an hour (with images made in the other direction between the images made below).

The clouds from the night before seemed to hang around for morning, which gave us a spectacular light show. Unfortunately, the direction we had hoped to photograph from had a well-placed RV and some power lines between us and Mt. Whitney. Of course, we didn’t see them in the darkness as we drove to the location and hiked up the hill, so we were limited in the images we could make in that direction. Still, those images had a beautiful reddish cast to them from the light reflected off the clouds behind us. What to do but spin around 180 degrees to look towards the east and the light show that was on.

There’s not much one can do when shooting into the morning sun but let the foreground go dark. Fortunately the rocky landscape offered an interesting silhouette, so long as you didn’t allow the black to dominate the frame. But with skies like these, how could it.

As the sun rose, the initial flash of light on the bottoms of the clouds faded as the skies above started showing their true blues. A change of lenses during that period allowed me to work with the bottom edge a bit more as the color slowly faded.

It was at that point I turned around again to make another photograph, believing the light show had ended. I’d settled on a combination of rocks in a nice composition on the other side of the gully when, as I was composing the framing, they started to glow. I immediately started making exposures. Then they turned pink. I made a couple of more exposures and then turned around again for the source of that light.

Apparently the sun had risen above some clouds off in the distant horizon to now spray red light across the lowest of the clouds above. Knowing it could last only seconds, I kept my longer lens on, composing the best I could with the colors and foreground below. All the while I was thinking of the sailor’s adage, “Red skies at night sailor’s delight, red sky at morn, sailors take warn.” I then realized that the image was like a volcano wave thrust into the air and composed to emphasize that.

I was right, within seconds it was gone. If I’d had a zoom lens, I likely would have zoomed out a bit more to have a better bottom edge, but there was no time to change lenses.

As I continued my review of images, thinking about the two lessons we’d had so far, I came across a couple of images that made me realize that what made them work was, in part, the relationship of the clouds to portions of the landscape I was photographing. In this image below, it’s the peak of the cloud, and the rough upper edge on the tail to the left, and how it reflects the mountains and ridge formations below.

Sierra Nevada Mountains from Alabama Hills, California, 2018

And with the image below, how the gap in the clouds and the white part overwhelming the darker area reflects the energy captured by the wave hitting the rock below. Both subtle, but real expressions of energy.

And below, the billowing texture of the sky reflecting the billowing nature of the subtly lit Painted Hills. Perhaps it would have been better had the clouds been moving at 90 degrees from where the layers are, in line with the folds of the hill. But as it is, the layers mirror the layering of the hills receding to the background. Here, having Charlie’s foot stool to give me a bit of elevation, which would have brought the tallest of the painted hills below the horizon, and given more emphasis to that layering of hills behind.

And sometimes you really don’t have much to work with. This morning at Devil’s Garden in the Grand Staircase Escalante gave us perhaps the most spectacular skies I’ve ever seen. The problem was that the incredible coloration was along a thin band along the horizon. Everything that was above what is shown below, while fascinating in its texture, was a cold steel-blue-gray. I kept hoping that the sun would break through and spread the brilliance across the entire sky like it did at the Alabama Hills, but alas, it quickly became obvious that it wouldn’t, so I had to work with what was there. Find a subject that could supplement the clouds.

The rock formation below was an easy choice because it filled the frame and at least hinted at the textures and undulations of the clouds above. An example of geologic forces that mimic the meteorologic forces at play in the skies that help form the geology.

Devil’s Garden, Grand Staircase Escalante, Utah, 2018

Unfortunately, while it’s an interesting picture, I don’t think it really works as a whole. Again, things don’t always work out the way one hopes. To steal from the workshop, it fails to achieve parity with the experience of being there.

As I noted above, going through these images made me realize that I’d subordinated my attention for what was happening in the skies to what was happening on the ground more often than not in recent years. That’s something that I really have to work on when we’re freed from this covid nightmare. But what working with the images did remind me of is that “skies” do not translate simply into “clouds.” When it comes to cloudless skies, I have several images that are successful with blank, blue skies, albeit often small segments of it. Blue skies are not always a reason to put the camera away.

And I think that Ann and I have very successfully explored (and I hope to keep at it) how amazing cloudless skies can be when the sun is below the horizon. So I had to include examples of that (as if Bandon was not enough). Perhaps this image works because it’s a very clear example of 1/3 foreground, 1/3 mid-ground, and 1/3 sky. One could perhaps be critical of the central placement of the painted hill, yet the slopes on either side of it prevented it from being anywhere else. And it has always struck me as important the band of rose along the horizon and the band of deeper red across the hill. All of that simply provides the backdrop for the foreground grasses, which are given a temporal element by the soon-to-be-gone frost on the ground. The sky in its simplicity adds to the beauty of the ground below.

The same can be said of the evening photograph taken near Lake Powell below even though the sky occupies an even smaller percentage of the image. The sky is necessary, if not for the simple purpose of informing the viewer why everything is of such a strange color. It’s because the sky is casting everything in the last glow of the sun’s rays for the day.

This was an interesting exercise. Perhaps one of the most interesting study sessions I’ve ever had. Let’s hope that the rest of the workshops are just as inspiring.

Lesson #2 - Skies

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Lesson #2 - Skies

Bandon 2019 in Black and White

Olmstead Point, Yosemite 2018

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