Clouds, letters and imagination

click photo to enlarge

"Clouds That Look Like Things" is the very accurate title of book available from the Cloud Appreciation Society*. The photographs for the publication were supplied by Society members and come from all over the world. Flying saucers, fish, dragons, people - you name it and someone, somewhere has probably photographed a cloud that, with a little imagination, looks like it. When you think about it, it's quite an obvious subject for a book. Who, as a child, hasn't stared at the clouds and seen the profile of a face, the outline of a castle, a bird or some other shape momentarily formed then slowly dissipating into an amorphous, cotton wool-like mass? If you're like me you see such things still.

But, as I discovered the other day, sometimes clouds, like people, feel the need to break the chains of their everyday existence and venture into situations new and challenging. I was photographing the "Water's Edge" visitor centre in Barton upon Humber, Lincolnshire. I'd taken shots inside the building, and I was looking for some of the exterior. One end of the building has a very prow-like canopy that reaches out to an area of tarmac where cars can be parked. I walked away from the building, turned round, put on my wide-angle lens and raised the camera to my eye. Immediately, what hadn't been apparent in my unencumbered field of view, suddenly became very obvious within the confines of the viewfinder. Clouds were forming the letter "Z" in the sky. More than that, they were making it right next to what, with a little imagination, was the letter "A". What a fortuitous conjunction - A to Z! What are the chances? Why have I never seen anything like it before? Perhaps, I thought, these were rogue clouds, clouds that wanted to extend their aerial art by combining it with earthly shapes. Perhaps the "letters" in my photograph are forerunners, the avant garde, the shape of things to come.

*I am a proud member with a certificate, number and badge to prove it!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Appreciating clouds

click photo to enlarge

I am one of the 13,175 (and counting) fully paid up members of The Cloud Appreciation Society, an organisation that proclaims the beauty and interest of clouds, that fights the banality of "blue sky thinking", and urges everyone to live life with their head in the clouds!

It's not surprising that this UK-based organisation has found more than half its membership in this group of islands: the British Isles are noted, not always favourably, for the clouds that stream overhead. However, members can be found across the world, in 66 very different countries, so it is obvious that elsewhere there are people who walk around looking upwards, appreciating the beauty of the meteorological phenomenon that makes our planet (as far as we know) unique.

If, like me, you can't conceive of living in a place where clouds don't form part of your everyday experience, and you want to maximise the pleasure that this marvel of nature offers, then you could do worse than visit the Cloud Appreciation Society's website. Here you will find information about types of cloud, photographs that illustrate the beauty of clouds, images of clouds that look like animals and objects, cloud art, poetry and prose, and much more.

I was thinking about the beauty of clouds (and this inexpensive, fun Society) as I took this photograph of a Lincolnshire wind farm. The past week has produced some particularly lovely skies, and I was pleased to be able to use these very three-dimensional fair weather clouds (stratocumulus) as a backdrop to the turbines.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/500
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On