Two o’clock in the morning and not a skunk, porcupine or raccoon in sight, so after turning in the irrigation water, I turned my camera toward the night sky. Photo stats — Camera: Fujifilm X-Pro 1. Support: hand held. Film speed: ISO 3200. Lens and aperture: 35mm at ƒ/1.4. Exposure: 1/4 second.
Thunderheads appear, change and disappear very quickly in the desert southwest. They can produce sudden and heavy rains, high winds, intense lighting storms and hailstorms. But often they form and put on a show, changing into all kinds of shapes, and then evaporate without a sound or drop of precipitation.
The first four photos were taken over a timespan of 10 minutes while driving on Highway 550 to Highway 528 and on to Corrales Road. The Weather Service interrupted the radio to announce the there was heavy rain and flooding on the other side of the Sandias from these thunderheads.
The last photo was taken from our deck where we sit and watch the clouds form and change over the Sandias through the bamboo and cottonwood trees.
I made a run to the dump, and the clouds over the Sandias from the west mesa were beautiful. Laurie likes the photo in color, I like it in B&W, so I decided to put both.
Thunderheads built up in the eastern sky, threatening to give us another early evening thundershower.
From Thursday afternoon until Saturday afternoon we have been on the east side of the Sandias at Desert Harbor Retreat, completely off the grid with no cell phone coverage or Internet. I have a lot of photos to process of landscapes, plants, flowers, insects, lizards and a large snake we encountered during our two night, day and a half stay at Desert Harbor. Today’s photo is a panorama of the storm clouds over the east side of the Sandias on Thursday evening.
We went to a talk by Jane Butel on the culinary history of the Rio Grande Valley in the Old San Ysidro Church in Corrales.
Another interesting sky caught with a drive-by.
Does a sky photographed using a digital camera become an iSky?
Are you finding yourself well rested, and full of energy after waking up to a clock showing the time an hour later than normal? I’m not. The photos in the series today were taken at 9:31 am, a little before noon (11:48 am) and at 7:09 pm.
When I noticed the contrails casting shadows on the clouds above them, I had to do a drive-by photo. The effect was so weird because I was heading east, the sun is still pretty far south, yet the shadows were cast on both sides of the contrails as if there were two light sources: the sun from the south and another light source from the northwest. Furthermore, for the contrails to cast shadows at all, it’s as if the sun were below the clouds. This is when things STOP making sense, you reach a DEAD END, the sun goes down, and you’re still confused.
Off Center & Not Even 