Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Clouds

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I think more than anything else, I miss the skies of New Mexico. The sharp turquoise and the ever changing clouds that sail by as if they have somewhere important to be.

Here in California, the skies may be blue, but it's a pale comparison to the skies of New Mexico. And there are so rarely any clouds worth speaking of.

But today,
I looked out my window
and much to my surprise, I saw this.

Well, not this exactly.
My camera was up front,
so I took this with my iPhone,
using the Hipstamatic App.


I'm still not sure if I'm a fan
of this kind of photography.
It seems to be quite popular these days,
making new photographs
look like they were taken
with an old plastic lens camera.

Realizing that the clouds
weren't going to float away,
I went and got my camera
and took this shot.


Not a great shot,
but I love the clouds so much.

Then I started playing with it a bit,
desaturating the landscape to where the clouds
were as wispy as could be.


Once more,
softened,
giving the setting a gauzy look.


I do so love photography
and manipulating images in the computer.
It makes me feel creative.

I have to wonder,
if I had been into photography
when all of this was done in the darkroom,
would I have been so enamored?

I wonder . . .

Back to the clouds.

In a short time,
the white puffs were evolving into this.


As the sky darkened,
my attention was drawn elsewhere.
We have the most amazing
Japanese maple tree.
Up until the recent wind storms,
it was heavy with leaves
sporting a striking shade of red.

Now,
most of the leaves have blown away,
with just a few left to remind me
of the former blaze of color.


That's it for today.

I'm going to bed
and dream of New Mexico skies.

5 comments:

Donna K said...

Can you believe I am still up at this ungodly hour??? Have to try and catch up on blog reading sometime. I sure do love looking at your photos. Your creativity is enviable.

Russ Krecklow said...

Blue skies and white clouds, how wonderful they are! I was inspired by your photos to go outside this morning and take some pictures, since it had warmed up to 35 degrees by the time I crawled out of bed. Will be posting some of those at some point. Today, we're working on things around the house. (How funny, my "word verification" is "borig")

Chuck and Anneke's RV travels said...

I have some experience at working on pictures in the dark room. I cannot say I thought it was fun at all:(

Unknown said...

Love your Clouds! What do you use for editing. I have Photoshop Elements but haven't spent the time to learn it yet. I really like Picasa for editing and managing photos.

I always procrastinate posting because I take soooo many pictures and it's hard to choose which ones to include.

Thanks for showing me it's not about quantity . . . but it is about quality.

Sharon

Merikay said...

I've notices the same clouds in the last day or two. I went over to Campbell and hen I left the sky way gray.When I returned the sky was blue with the huge white popcorn clouds growing!

i thought they would be interesting to photograph.