I mentioned in an earlier post a couple of my photography goals in the near future, one being that of the atmosphere and images of the natural accruing conditions of storms, cloud formations and the such. Of course this can be done anytime of the year that these conditions occur but springtime in Kansas is well known for these violent and beautiful conditions. I haven’t been paying real close attention to this presently but that will all change in the near future. I got this inspiration last year while out around a local lake during such a storm. These conditions change sometimes within seconds so it can be a real hit and miss opportunity.

© Brad Mangas

I went back to these files recently and decided to work a couple of them up for fun. The stormy weather wasn’t my objective the day these were taken but I just couldn’t help but to point the camera in their direction and see what I could capture. I actually learned something from these shots and the approach in getting something I may be please with. The sunbeam image turned out to my liking except for one small thing. If you notice the sliver of land along the bottom you will see a very small item sticking up just to the right of center, this happens to be a water tower that is some 5 miles away. What I like is the scale of size this item gives to the rest of the image. Shooting this again and seeing what I see now I would chose to include just a touch more land maybe to extend across the entire bottom of the frame. I thought at first I should clone all the land out of the shot but that small strip actually adds something of importance to the overall scene, oh well, live and learn, another great benefit of photography, one can always improve in any area. It’s very exciting and somewhat humbling to me to know this capture can never be repeated as it is here which makes me wonder, what will be the next stormy opportunity awaiting?

© Brad Mangas

The image entitled Sky Fire is another example of how a small part of the overall scene plays such an important part of the image as a whole. This section of back lit clouds is actually the shot but just wouldn’t work for me if that’s all that was seen. Looks like I may have my work cut out in capturing some of these marvels of nature. A since of scale is something I really hadn’t thought of but seems to play an important role in certain scenes. I’m glad I worked these shots up to discover something I was missing. Along with backgrounds, foregrounds, composition, depth of field, focus, exposure and all the other attributes of producing a compelling photograph I now must add sense of scale. Oh boy what fun awaits!