Cloud Photography: Looking Up

I recently read an blog post about cloud photography and was intrigued by the idea. Yesterday while I was out shooting a the bird sanctuary, a storm was coming in and I was able to practice some cloud photography. I think the images are a good start.

Clouds have a way of giving your photo energy, because they take the otherwise uninteresting sky, and make it interesting. On a normal day this scene would not have caught my eye, but the thin wavy clouds got my attention and I took the shot. A shot like this one would be very bland without the clouds in the sky, it would be overwhelmed by the water or the barren treeline.

I would not have been taking pictures of the sky at all if I didn't think that the clouds were interesting. Now there may not be an overly interesting pattern in this formation of clouds, but the idea behind the shot is simple. Find something in the sky that interests you. In this second shot I like the strong contrast between the blue and the gray of the clouds. This shot would not have been possible at short time later, as thicker clouds rolled over. I would have liked to get a better shot of the storm front itself, but there were too many clouds like those in the photo above to get anything I considered overly moving.

I didn't get any interesting bird shots yesterday, as mating season will be upon us soon, which means some of the larger birds are off building nests or looking for locations to do so. I have not seen any indication of nests being built in the sanctuary, but only time will tell if that is the case or not. I hope I can get some hummingbird shots like I did last year.