Just … clouds
We have a running joke in my family. When my two youngest children were in middle school, I’d drop them off and pick them up from school every morning and afternoon. As mornings and afternoons usually go, there was often something dramatic happening in the sky. Light rays piercing the clouds like heavenly spotlights. Soft, wispy clouds backlit with a palette of pastels. White cumulus puffs rolling slowly across the sky like sheep in a field.
“Look at those clouds!” I’d marvel, internally wishing I was somewhere with a sweeping earthbound vista to match the sky and my camera clicking away at it. This went on throughout semesters of the daily dropping off and picking up. My middle son would humor me, briefly diverting his attention from his phone, a hint of a smile accompanying his raised eyebrow. Meanwhile, my youngest son embraced the classic tween tradition of ignoring me completely.
Until one day …
“Why do you always say that?” he asked.
I was taken aback. How do you answer a question that seems so obvious to you?
“Because those clouds are gorgeous!”
“Because we get to see this wondrous beauty every day!”
“Because … I mean, just look at ‘em.”
“They’re just clouds, though,” he said. “They’re the same every day. Just normal clouds. I never see what’s so special about them.”
I explained my perspective. I pointed to colors and contrasts and tricks of the light. Shadows moving through the slow, shapeless shapes. The deep blue empty behind it all.
“Yeah, but … they’re just … clouds,” he replied.
We were at an impasse. He’d stumped his old man. We both knew it. We agreed to disagree. I realized then and there that he genuinely didn’t see what I saw in the clouds. Not simply from being a disinterested pre-teen or from any lack of vision. He just simply saw the world differently. I found comfort in the fact that my youngest sees things in his own wonderful way. It gave me a new insight into who he is.
But every day since, in a lame attempt at dad-joking, I’d still make a point to say, “Look at those clouds!”
In the past few months, I’ve become obsessed with clouds in my photography. I seem to spend a lot of time lately looking out the windows of cars or office buildings, wishing I was somewhere else with my camera. I check the weather apps all day, trying to translate the vague icons of small-cloud-by-big-sun or big-cloud-by-small-sun into an actionable plan for getting out to shoot. Most days, I’m thwarted by the whims of the sky gods as those majestic clouds that beckon me all day always seem to evaporate on the drive home from work.
Sometimes, when everything aligns just right, I find myself with a camera under the perfect sky at the perfect time of day. I put on the 70–200mm lens to catch all the delicate details. Or I shoot wide shots of big skies over whatever foreground I have. I’ve even made multiple attempts at shooting time-lapse video to get that magical blossoming effect of massive white cumulus clouds blooming and evaporating away. I come home with an SD card full of glorious sky.
And then I feel silly.
“Cloud photos are so passé,” I say to myself. “No one’s going to buy a picture of a cloud.” “That’s not epic enough.” “There are no leading lines. No rule of thirds. No foreground interest. No midground interest.”
“They’re just … clouds.”
But sometimes, I find inspiration, like the photos of Adam Old.
Adam is the co-founder of The Little River Conservancy in Florida and a friend of mine from design groups in the early days of the internet. His Instagram is almost exclusively photos of clouds and skyscapes. He’s been posting — sometimes daily, sometimes weekly — since 2017, and has amassed over 1600 images that create a impressive catalog of skies. The account serves as a diary of sorts: a pure and minimal record that says simply “This is what today looked like.”
But the variety of Adam’s images belie the simplistic appearance of “just … clouds.” Each image is a choice. Each post represents an intention by the photographer to record and share that particular moment. The skyscapes, spanning over six years of Adam’s IG, aren’t just random shots of landscapes minus land. Just imagine, as a photographer, the mental habit of consistently devoting that kind of attention to observing one subject for years. “Look at those clouds!” indeed.
I strive for a “painterly” effect in most of my photos, especially the wide-angle, grand landscapes. I frequently turn to landscape paintings in classical art for inspiration, particularly paintings from the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Adam’s cloud and sky photography inspires me in a similar way, because it reminds me of the years-long practice and dedication that art requires of the artist. Further, his photography reminds me that part of the work in art is the process that rarely gets seen: the study.
We usually only see the most famous pieces of an artist’s body of work. The masterpieces. The stuff that ends up on posters, t-shirts, and tote bags sold in museum gift shops. Definitive pieces featured in a Survey of Fine Arts class to illustrate their particular era in art history.
What we often don’t see is the dedicated study behind the masterworks.
How many hours did Maxfield Parrish spend just painting clouds over and over again to get the amazing gradients and textures in his skies at sunset? How many repeated studies of cloud, haze, fog and atmosphere did Caspar David Friedrich sketch and paint to master the sublime shadows and highlights of skies in his landscapes? Thomas Cole and his contemporaries in the Hudson River School spent entire careers laboring in the study of clouds and skies. Imagine the nearly obsessive focus that must have gone into that study.
In a letter to Cole, Romantic era British painter John Constable once wrote:
I have done a great deal of skying*. . . . That landscape painter who does not make his sky a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids. . . . It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key-note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment. (Source)
The wisdom in that quote applies just as much to modern landscape photography as it does to the paintings by the 19th Century romantics.
Photographing clouds is not merely some diversion or a trivial pursuit. There’s so much more there than “just … clouds.” Every cloud is both universal and unique; infinite and ephemeral. Every cloud is like a miniature sunset or moonrise. The change of the light. The slow transformation until it melds into something else or disappears completely. The almost imperceptible impermanence that is both frozen and evolving right before our eyes.
On a technical level, clouds are the essence of shadows and highlights in photography. I encourage you to experiment with how the shadows and highlights sliders in your favorite editing tool affect the texture and contrast of clouds in your photos. Ignore the ground elements for a bit. Just focus on how different combinations of increased or decreased shadows and highlights change the clouds. Where do the highlights blow out or crush down to muddy shapes? Where do the shadows flatten the textures or crunch the depth? Where is the line between painterly subtlety and just too much? What do you lose, and what do you gain? Where is the sweet spot that transforms your skies into “the chief organ of sentiment” that Constable wrote about?
Similarly, think of the gradients in clouds and even the gradient of a cloudless sky as one big tone curve. Such a gradient is a great way to practice how the tone curve tool effects and changes the contrast and color balance in a photo. And not just the global tone curve. Delve into the RGB cures as well. It’s a powerful tool that often gets overlooked or under appreciated in the editing workflow.
Consider taking the time and effort to do a cloud study for your landscape photography. I think you’ll find that there’s so much more to a sky than “just … clouds.”
On a personal note, there’s more to studying clouds than just the technical aspects of learning how to shoot and edit them for the best results. Observing clouds, shooting photo after photo of skies, committing myself to Adam Old’s impressive level of dedication to the subject over an extended timeframe. There are greater lessons to learn from that slow, methodical practice than just how the sliders in Lightroom work (as valuable as that is).
A cloud study gives me permission to let go of that feeling of silly embarrassment I mentioned earlier in this piece. It’s ok that cloud photos are passé, cliché, elementary or low-hanging fruit. It reminds me that not every single shot needs to be a portfolio image. Or that the value of a photo is decided by whether or not someone wants to buy it. A cloud study is an invitation to ignore all the rules-of-thirds and leading lines, foreground/midground/background interest. In short, it reminds me that photography is much more than just the end photograph.
This is a realization that photography, for me, should be about process first. Every shot is an opportunity to learn something new about the practice and to become better. If I’m able to do that, then all the rest will surely follow.
And that brings me back to where I started, thinking of why I began noticing the clouds in the first place on those drives to and from school, and how grateful I am for my son’s no-nonsense honesty about how we observe our world. His simple questioning about why I thought clouds were so special was a gift of mindfulness that I couldn’t have gotten from hearts and thumbs-ups online.
This week marked the beginning of the new semester, and we’ve been back in the car mornings and afternoons trekking across town to schools. I’m happy to report that we’ve moved on from “Look at those clouds” as a punchline to long conversations about the way the sky looks as we drive, the gradients in a cloudless morning sky that goes from the hazy silver-white in east to lightening blue-grey of last night’s darkness in the west. I look forward to all the skies that this year will bring.
*What a great term! “Skying.” Count me in!
