The Clouds and I....

Clouds fascinate me. I often walk to the beach after work and look up to the open sky. Its vastness also intrigues me, it appears eternal some days and yet on other days the sky seems heavy and angry as though it is going to fall in on us. I shot these photos one evening last week prior to the storm warnings being posted up and down the south coast here. The skies slowly filled with heavy nimbus clouds that broke and rained for days on end.

This afternoon in exactly the same area I shot these photos. It is hard to imagine that I was standing in exactly the same spot. The whispy clouds danced through the sky like soft fluffy cotton wool; the background such a pretty shade of blue. It almost looks like a painting, how clever is Mother Nature, how artistic she is.

We have entered the second month of autumn and still the weather is beautiful, although it has rained some, the skies are still fascinating. They change from day to day, colour to colour, shape to shape.

My eyes turn toward the sky at all different times of the day not finding much amongst the steel, concrete and dirt of a construction site however, sitting next to the ocean here it rests gently overhead with so much to offer and entertain one with. It is hard to believe that they are nothing more than a collection of tiny drops of water and ice that are held in the air and when you stop and think about it they also support all forms of life on this planet.

Mind you, they also bring destruction in the forms of severe storms and hail too. I think that it is because clouds constantly change structure and colour that they then become so fascinating, some heavy cumulus, some stormy nimbus, some explosion -shaped cumulonimbus and some whispy. I am constantly intrigued by the changes; these past few days have been a carnival of clouds and storms out here on the beach.

One afternoon I captured a lightening bolt. The clouds seemed to crash into one another producing electricity and the most amazing electrical show. As I darted home those very same clouds chased me as though to say I had no right to photograph them hence, I got soaked lol. I hope you enjoy my photos. Sweet dreams J wherever you are.

The Clouds'

(A Reply to William Wordsworth's Daffodils)

“Lonely as a cloud”? Exception!Mr Wordsworth, sir,

we must as clouds correct your misconceptionto “content as a cumulus”.

Praise not earthfast daffodils

but Hosts of Silv’ry Celestials.

Golden blooms stretch’d along a bay

might present an awesome sight.

Yet all ten thousand, come what may could never,

breaking free, take flight.

Gaze above you. Reward your glances

with our infinite, shape-shifting dances.

Poets, artists, photographers too,

seeing layers, heaps and curls of hair

enrich their souls with what we do

-bunching, swirling in the air.

Those daffs outdid the waves? The dolts.

Let ‘em try Kelvin-Helmholtz!

Sir, when on your indoor couch reclin’d

(A habit too often indulg’d?)think cirrus, floccus - much more refin’d.

Enlightened, your inward eye will bulge.

Then your heart with pleasure fills

and soars amongst celestials.

© Julie Elizabeth Smalley. March 2008