Chris Davidoff
Clouds 2
Fall 2018
11/27/2018
Overlooking the Engineering center (direction of view is North-West)
This day took me by surprise. The clouds were super interesting and developing in crazy ways. Just over the mountains were numerous Altocumulus lenticularis, wheich are a type of cloud that forms over mountains and looks kind of like a lens. You can see some of that on the left side of the image. That wasn’t my primary goal in this image though. This photo focuses more on the undulating sea of clouds that stretched over the engineering center of CU Boulder. These stratus/stratocumulus clouds were contrasting heavily with the shallow angle of the sun. I was standing next to the basketball gym, looking North-West at about 10am.
If we look at the Skew-T plot:
We cans see that the CAPE was 0 at 6AM. This means there was a stable atmosphere, which I can agree with because no storms formed during the course of the day. To me though, it was a little odd that it was a flat 0 because there was so much activity. I suppose that a non-turbulent atmosphere can still develop a great deal of moisture and clouds though. The plot says that the highest chance to observe clouds is roughly 7270 meters. That’s about 24,000 feet which does not agree with what I captured here. However, it could be seen that there was another ceiling of clouds above what we can observe here. If you look at the 3074m line, there’s a little bit of convergence happening, and that would agree more with what we see here. Since this photo was 4 hours after the Skew-T, it could be that those lines converged even closer.
This photo was taken with a Note9. I didn’t have my larger camera with me but I didn’t want to miss the moment, so I used the phone. It was shot at F2.4, 1/500 second shutter speed with an ISO of 100. I used Adobe’s Lightroom to modify the image. This included contrast, a few gradients, and a little softening of the bottom of the image while sharpening the top. That ended up resulting in making the buildings look almost like a model given the depth of field effect that occurred from these edits.
I like this image a lot, but I’m sad I couldn’t have taken it with my bigger camera. Nonetheless, I think my edits brought out an interesting and luring view of it. What I don’t like is that the clouds don’t line up perfectly to point at the top of the engineering center, or that a viewer may not know whether they should look at the clouds or at the buildings (causing wandering eyes which usually means bad composition). Regardless, it’s got some cool clouds!
-Chris Davidoff
20 Comments. Leave new
Great photo, almost makes the Engineering Center look like a half decent place. Capture of the clouds above are great, amazing symmetry even if that wasn’t your original intent.
Really cool cloud structures you captured. They way they are angled really draws the focus straight to the EC which is neat. The foreground is a little bright for my liking though, takes a little too much focus away from the clouds in my opinion.
great image. i like the contrast.
the most beautiful engineering building I ever seen. Looks awesome!! The wide structure is great. Nice post-processing.
I’m glad you were able to capture this, I saw some interesting clouds yesterday and was lamenting the dirty window on the bus. The texture on the bottom of these clouds I think is really unique. The bright contrast around the more interesting dark clouds really make them pop too.
A great day for clouds. These are great colors and could be used as an engineering school poster.
I like how the clouds have a clearly dense base and how they show this denseness physically.
I like all the texture within the clouds and the sharp angles of the engineering center contrast with the soft clouds very well.
Great image. I really like the difference in color palettes in the foreground and the background. The three prominent cloud masses are really interesting.
I like this image a lot. The contrast on the clouds gives lots of depth and including the campus in the image gives a sense of being overwhelmed.
I like the dark grouping in this photo. It could be cool to crop out more of the bottom.
The editing of this photo is rally well done. I like the darker feel to it because the engineering center is in the frame.. Not a very refreshing image, but more dark and scary.
This might be my favorite so far. I keep getting confused form inversion. I can’t tell if the clouds are clouds or sky. It is very cool. The building makes this image really stand out as well.
I really like the colors within this image. I actually took a picture of this same cloud formation because of how awesome it looked. Really like the color of the EC in the foreground as well.
The comparison from the bland lower clouds to the colorful upper clouds is quite a good demonstration of the various cloud types and the layers that form in the air. Great photo!
Love the coloring of this image, really pops but isnt overly colorful. The contrast of the orange and grey is really nice
great image. the odd angle and the strong colors make it look like a painting.
Woah. Great job with this photo. The colors are spectacular. It seems as though you shot the photo sideways
I like the colors and also the grays in this image. Interesting decision to rotate the image. Makes it unique.
Really nice image. Great colors across the sky and the amount texture is great,