One of my favourite subjects to photograph, skies have always fascinated me. I've always loved extreme weather too, so maybe in another life I might have been a meteorologist...or even a storm-chaser! Some of these photos are also seascapes, but they were all taken specifically for the interesting skies.
The colours in all these photos are exactly as they were when I shot them, apart from the two blue ones below. The prints of those were quite garish and looked awful when scanned, but it wasn't until I bought a neg scanner that I discovered the negatives had been badly processed and came out completely blue. I had a few films like that, but by a fluke they were appropriately mostly sea pics...which I think look rather nice.
I only had a few frames left in my camera on this particular day, and no more film with me, but it was enough to capture this totally unexpected and delightful sky, above and below. It's a Kelvin-Helmholst cloud - named after two physicists who studied turbulent airflow - this rare occurence produced when two different layers of air in our atmosphere are moving at different speeds. Looking rather like a pie-crust, I called this one 'Pie in the Sky'.
And some photos taken with b&w film.
The next several views were taken from my balcony.
The cloud in the photo above looked like the Nexus from the Star Trek film 'Generations', so I just called it the nexus. However, I've since found out that they are called billow clouds, caused by an instability of the Kelvin-Helmholtz phenomena. I did wonder what the word nexus actually means, so I looked it up and it means a connection or series of connections linking two or more things. Which fits nicely!
One morning the sky was totally aflame with red and gold. The photo above was taken just as it began to disperse and, like the saying...
'Red sky at night, shepherd's delight, Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning'
...so it too had soon turned into a dull grey cloud cover. I loved the way the birds seem to be huddling on the roof. Maybe they were aware that rain would set in later!
Another flaming sky, this time at sunset.
More black & white photos.
Billow clouds with seagulls.
Some rather nice thunderheads taken through my kitchen window. Unfortunately I missed the best before I could go and fetch my camera. The one that got away is always the best! ;)
And finally, the last word in skies: the solar eclipse taken on the 11th of August 1999, which was the first total eclipse in Britain since 1927. A wonderfully magical moment when the birds roosted and fell silent, the temperature dropped, and the street lamps came on as darkness descended. I camped out for the hour or so sitting in the garden on a beach chair with a rug, flask of coffee and my camera on a tripod, and just kept snapping away. This one is my favourite.
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