Sunday's Southern Clouds

  This Sunday evening's cloud show was spectacular and strange. The beautiful cirrus you see here were coming from the south and taking the form of mare's tails that seemed to fly across downtown Olympia. I usually look West or Southwest to watch the clouds move in, so the southern approach was a new experience for me.
  I was watching these clouds by Capitol Lake where the annual Bon Odori festival was happening. But I couldn't take my eyes off the clouds to watch the kimonoed dancers, so I watched the clouds and enjoyed the bizarre soundtrack of traditional Japanese music. Adding music to cloud watching was interesting and I decided to add something to each of the next several cloud photographs.
   I included the infamous Mistake on the Lake building in one shot (above) and liked the contrast of the wispy dynamic clouds and this dark chunk of architecture. In fact, I prefer it to the photo (below)--clouds with predictable strip of landscape.

     I've set up a few decent photos of people with clouds, but think this one (taken by another than myself at my direction) doesn't work. I was hoping it would appear as if the clouds were blasting out of my head Medusa style but it looks more like I have an enormous rack of antlers and a headache. This might have worked with a wide-angle lens, fill flash, and some other tricks that I do not have up my sleeve. I'll keep working on it and will make sure I am not dead center in the photo. (Thanks for trying, honey!)

   Next, I zoomed in a bit to include a clump of trees in the landscape strip (below). This is an improvement and I like the  shape and color contrast and the reaching feeling of both trees and clouds.

   Moving a bit more toward the abstract and jaunty...a study in light (below). The now squirming ice-crystal clouds scatter sunlight in a way that makes them appear white to our eyes. The energy of this same sunlight is absorbed and reflected by the green leaves at the top of this tree. And, well, there's the lamp-post looking like someone sticking his head into the photo at the last minute to get into the light show.  

 

   And, zoomed in as far as my Digital Elph would let me (below) is a view of the cloud no object or music could enhance. Within the two mare's tails was this fantastic spiraling pattern that looked to me like the double helix of a strand of DNA. Oh, the universe! When will it stop playing tricks on me?

   The most wonderful aspect of Sunday evening's cloud show was that I caught it serendipitously while wandering around a pretty deserted downtown with my husband, shopping for a dinner picnic (spring rolls and red wine!), and searching for a place to sit by the water. Digital Elph: Don't Leave Home Without It.