What Do You Do for a Cloudless Sky??

I'm with Christian, who said "I believe in the waiting process." I would add to that "I believe in getting up early in the morning." The light that is reflecting off the rest of the scene is even more important than the sky itself. As others have said, you can easily minimize the sky by placing the horizon line higher or doing natural still lifes. But the quality of the light is paramount. At 7 AM the light is usually evocative in some way, with or without clouds. Backlit subjects with very low sun are fantastic - early or very late in the day. I almost never shoot my streetscapes at midday.

I'm with Dan Smith: if it ain't happening, you don't shoot it. I don't care if I've traveled a thousand miles, I don't feel the necessity to put something on film if it isn't happening.

 

<p>Look for intimate compositions excluding the sky or only take trips in the winter or during monsoon season if you want grand scenics with clouds.

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Ultimately, if you want the best photograph you can make of your subject, you come back for it when those conditions are best, not just because you're there right now. I don't even expect to make great photographs while on trips unless I know the area(s) well. Sticking to places where you understand the light and seasons is a far more productive way to make strong and compelling photographs.

Spend some time in Scotland - you can often see nothing but cloud, and you will soon appreciate the occaisional cloudless sky.

 

Fill the sky with trees - but where you don't get clouds, trees are scarce.

 

Put an assistant in a jet, and get them to draw some artistic vapour trails.

Lots of good advice and sympathy. I wondered what a blue filter would be good for, now I know. I guess the best thing is realize one has to shift conceptual gears when the scene doesn't meet the visualiztion that I had pre-formed in my mind. Sticking with familiar places is something I've been doing. After all, St. Ansel lived in Yosemeti.

Don't you have a cloud filter in your kit?

There is always a photograph to be made even in some of the worst shooting conditions. I learned a great lesson awhile back: Never get so set on making the images you think you'll be able to make on any particular trip. The chances of everything falling into place are often remote and involve elements over which you may have little or no control. The magic happens when opportunity is met with preparedness. If things look bleak, just look for different opportunities. For cloudless skies, maybe exclude or minimize the sky. Look for detail shots. A bald sky, if filtered properly and with a dramatic foreground might be just fine in some instances. You can graduate the darkness of the sky under the enlarger. I think the images we think imagine we'll be able to make at a particular place are ones we've seen before that were made by artists that practically live in that place or at least visit very often. Frequent visits or extended stays will certainly improve the odds of getting the dramatic clouds we dream of. Researching the weather patterns of that area and digging for background info on photographs others have made might clue you into a better time or season to visit.

Very entertaining! Did not know I was the only idiot looking for clouds - my wife thinks I am crazy - well?????

 

I do like Jim's approach. Recently I ran into a rainy day 4 hours from home. I ended up seeing areas of the park I had never seen before and came home with several wonderful images that I never would have thought of taken! Instead of thinking vast landscapes I went for landscape portraits and macro photography!

 

With clear blue skies I will often just go with the flow, go vertical contrast the deep blue sky against an interesting reduced foreground.

Sometimes you just get lucky<div></div>

Let's try this again, sorry about the dust spots and bad scan, but I am digitally inept.<div></div>

What filters did you use. I usually use an yellow-orange. Last

time I used over a polaraizer. Havent printed the negatives yet but

they look more dramatic. I was wandering if there is some kind

of split density colored filters like the ones you use for

decreasing exposure on skies at sunset -those aren't colored-

so one can add contrast in the sky but leaving the rest of the

scene intact.

Is there such a thing?

I'm with the, if there's no clouds shoot something else crowd. I find it odd that on a photo trip where one doesn't find clouds someone couldn't find anything to shoot that doesn't require clouds. Come on, there's more to the landscape than "the grand vista". Step inside the landscape. Frame your images with trees or rock. You need to be open when you�re out. Not just go for the photo that you had in your mind before you left. After saying all this I'll agree that if the weather doesn't behave it can be a pain. That's why I do most of my photography in my backyard. I can see the subtle changes that take place from day-to-day, hour-to-hour. But still, if you out in a great location, it seems odd that you couldn't find anything of interest.

 

Good luck and my the clouds be with you, Ed

Christian, I generally use a red, orange or yellow filter. Sometimes green depending on the vegetation. Overall, I think the orange gives the best results. I should use it more than I do.

 

For everyone that posted example photos, they are beautiful. The pilgramage to Monument Valley (I'm a huge fan of John Ford) is on my short list to do in this lifetime. Hope I have the luck of good clouds when I get there.

I don't believe this thread. Only a very few people seem to get it.

When you go somewhere, do not go with the idea that you know

what you will be photographing. (Someone did say something

similar to this already.) Go with no preconceptions whatsoever.

And then when you get there, just open your eyes, man. In any

one spot, anywhere on the planet, there are at least dozens, if

not hundreds, of excellent photographs to be made. All you need

to do is look. About the worst possible thing you can do is go

knowing what you want in your pictures. If you get your

landscapes with the clouds you want so badly, all you will have

is a "pretty" (very different from beautiful) picture that is just like

all the other pretty pictures out there. If you go with

preconceptions, there can be no life in your photographs, for you

will not be seeing in a truly alive manner (it is by definition

impossible to do so if you have preconceptions).

Ditto. Going out with a preconception blinds me to what's out there.

All good answers. I like Bill's best about the rain dance. I tend to look at the details instead.

 

Rich

www.rcodaphotography.com

Michael,

You may have opened my eyes. Lately, I've been going out with some very pre-conceived ideas. Maybe that's causing the rut I'm in. Thanks.

I think Christian�s question raises some thoughts that touch upon the basics of our work and how we approach it. Christian�s comment suggests that he desires to record what he sees at a particular time and place. Of course, this is a perfectly sound approach.

 

However, while I am quite willing to capture something that I think is worthy of capturing, I am also willing to create something that may never have existed, or which did not exist at a particular time. Thus, I regard photography as a means of creating an image on a piece of paper, not just accepting what you find or encounter. My first love is B & W photography of whatever format, but I also do a lot of digital work, or work with digitized film images. Working on the computer I enjoy making panorama images, either vertical or horizontal, and I sometimes add a sky to supply the one I would have liked to find, but did not.

 

I like these images, and so do my customers. I never represent an image as anything other than what it is, so there is not question of trying to �put one over� on anyone, or of trying to play tricks with reality. To my mind both approaches are equally valid, and I enjoy working both ways.

 

By the way, my approach in no way includes going out with preconceived ideas of what kind of images will be made. Often I set off with no idea in mind at all. But there are times when I will return to a specific site at a specific time in order to make a previsualized image. For example, I have taken many photos of a particular petroglyph close to my home, often returning because of the weather or time of day, and recently at a particular time of the year so that the sun�s last rays fell on the petroglyph, and nothing else in the image, in a way that I had long planned to exploit.

 

Cheers,

 

Joe Stephenson

Sometimes, for reasons good or bad, you're at a spot where, after long premeditation and planning, you're finally going to capture that particular precious image. Many past posts, including several of my own, have dealt with the rehearsal that goes into such an approach. Ain't nothing wrong with that, esp. when we're talking about moving around 8x10 and bigger equipment. You want to be ready. Then what happens? No clouds, too many clouds, rain, etc. etc. Alex's question is reasonable one, and there have been some excellent replies. Minimize the sky, darken or lighten it with filters, graduate it on the enlarger. Look through any of a number of b&w landscape books by the Big Names and you'll see plenty of examples.

 

Like most of us I gather, I find myself on site at a particular limited time and have to deal with whatever Mother Nature is serving up at the moment. But I do have one kind of negative preference: I don't like to use a dramatic stormy/cloudy sky as a crutch to carry what would otherwise be a lackluster, uninteresting subject. At best, clouds perform a compositional role, esp. when they're in a kind of structural or tonal harmony with the subject per se, as a mountain range for example, answering to or showing off that subject but not dominating it or standing in place of it. At worst, they're a cheap and easy substitute for real content.

 

I can only agree about what Michael says on the subject of preconceptions, but this is merely one negative aspect of a much larger and generally very positive thing--the advance contemplation, forethought, practice, and logistical calculation that we all know lie unseen behind some of our craft's most successful work.

 

But of course you've got to be ready for the unexpected, the unplanned, although I suspect in many cases that even these seemingly improvised images are often ultimately a product of previous thought and experience. Somewhere (the autobiography, I think) Ansel Adams talks about a trip to Alaska for landscape that got rained out, so he shot close-ups of plants instead--some really nice work, among his best known images. I got one of my better landscapes so far when, after shooting a well-known scene after many months of preparation, I all of a sudden realized that there was an equally interesting (and far less familiar) scene 180 degrees in the opposite direction. So, of course, we've got to keep our minds open.

 

But this is big, heavy, cumbersome equipment we're dealing with here, right? Or is this discussion, as frequently happens in discussions of "philosophical" or "esthetic" matters on this board, gradually drifting into the very different world of smaller format imaging?

This begins from previous writing that may have already been

posted on this forum, but maybe not. In any case, it is germane

to the discussion here. At the end of the next paragraph is sort of

a plug for our Vision and Technique workshops, although

especially since they are all currently filled (although we are

considering offering another in late Sptember), that is not the

purpose.

 

The photographer's central question is this: how do you decide

what to photograph? What most photographers do (not counting

those who carefully construct what they photograph) is walk

around or drive around until something catches their eye and

makes them say, "Wow" to themselves. (One photographer I

know once said, "Photography is 'Wow.' All the rest is craft.")

They then set up their camera and make a photograph of that

which caught their eye. Then they repeat the process until

something else makes them say, "Wow," and they make another

photograph, and so on. Now, by definition, we can only respond

to something that on some level we already know. So when we

photograph those things that stop us in our tracks and make us

say, "Wow" we are confirming what we already know. Working

like this is fine at the beginning of ones visual journey, but after a

while, for most photographers, even for most of the best ones (In

"Looking at Photographs" John Szarkowski said, "The genuinely

creative period of most photographers has rarely exceeded ten

or fifteen years."), the work becomes repetitive and either stops

entirely or becomes less interesting for the photographer to

make. Being bounded by who we are, we get in a visual rut as

photographers. How do you get out of that visual rut? You need

to photograph what you don't know. But how can you photograph

what you don't know when, by definition, you can only respond to

what you already know? The answer to that question is central to

our workshops where Paula and I demonstrate the answer.

(Much easier than explaining it in words.) It has to do how to with

use the camera or maybe more precisely, how to see with a

camera, but has nothing to do with swings and tilts or any of that

technical stuff. What we demonstrate is applicable to all formats,

though it is easiest to demonstrate with a view camera. (End of

previous writing.)

 

So, there are limits on the photographer's personal growth when

working by responding only to what makes us say, "Wow."

Photographing from preconceptions is one step removed from

that--in the wrong direction. One can only photograph from

preconceptions if one is photographing what one thinks one

should be photographing. And that is a very different thing than

being open and responding spontaneously (there is lots of

spontaneity with view camera work, although execution can take

a few minutes).

 

Back to Alex's opening comment. "Gets frustrating when you

drive a hundred miles for a shot and the clouds go away." Think

how much you are missing while you are driving that 100 miles!

 

Try this, Alex: go to one particular spot close by. It could be as

close as your back yard, (a place someone who posted to this

thread goes), and spend one entire day there. Draw a circle

about 10 feet in diameter. GIve yourself a rule: At all times you

must keep at least one leg of the tripod in the circle. Expose at

least a dozen negatives--all different. (More negatives is even

better, if you have enough holders.) Do not be in a hurry to

expose a negative. Just sit or stand there, and look. Slowly,

carefully. Look at everything--near, far, middle ground. Eventually,

if you can get tuned in, you will see so many things to

photograph that twelve or twenty negatives will seem like far too

few.

 

Then, take this experience and apply it to the other places you

go. If you do this excercise seriously, whole new worlds of

photographic possibilities should open up to you. Good luck,

Alex.

 

Michael A. Smith

Thanks Mike. And thanks for you very generous contributions to this thread.

Monument Valley/clouds? It is the desert,I like to shoot the desert in the winter.Educate yourself about weather;high pressure low pressure.When I see a low pressure system moving through an area I figure on more moisture.I like to photograph landscapes with virga,try predicting that.A find higher moisture odds with full moons.

There is also a late summer early fall monsoonal pattern in the southwest.You want clouds,Oregon coast ranges ,Washington state Olmypic Penisula.Sunrise and sunset have less solar evaporation activity. Walt Byrnes