Looking UP

I like looking down when I’m hiking - finding small little surprises on the side of the trail. Tiny flower buds, dying leaves and dried up pond beds are interesting studies in shapes and colors. But I also like to look up, and I think a lot of us have forgotten how to do that recently. We’re always looking down at a screen of some sort, either a tablet or a phone, or looking straight ahead at a computer screen. That’s become more the norm in the last few months as well, since most of us are not driving around too many places right now in the middle of 2020.

I do, however, still get down to the boardwalk in town and the hiking trail while maintaining social distancing, and I try to look up and notice what the heavens are doing at any particular time. Sometimes mother nature gives me some spectacular views.

There is a photo at the top I call “Lake Huron Colors”, and I was in love with the muted blues in the sky that were matched by the lake. It was, indeed, a “blue” day since it was the dead of winter, but I do like stormy skies and clouds. They are much more interesting that the hazy blue of a cloudless summer sky. As long as these storm clouds don’t drop anything menacing on my head, I like to see them quickly scooting by before the downpour starts.

Sometimes the Great Lakes and the Saint Clair River, near where I live, generate their own unique cloud covers. I was waiting to photograph a freighter one day, when a freak snowstorm came roaring down the river, my shoes got soaked by river wash, I could not see the Canadian shoreline a mile away from me in Michigan and I had to temporarily put my camera under my coat and take refuge behind a large tree. That lasted about ten minutes, then when the freighter arrived, it was bright and sunny and beautiful not 20 minutes later. I watched the storm disappear south moving straight along the river.

I’m not a cloud expert, but I do like the giant fluffy cumulus clouds, I like wispy cirrus clouds, I like the little loner clouds who seem to have broken away from the flock and are floating on their own through a bright blue heaven. I like all clouds. Next time you’re outside, maybe take a minute to lie in the grass and look at the shapes in the sky like you did when you were a kid.










For more of my sky images, please visit my collection here:
https://mary-bedy.pixels.com/collections/clouds

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Am An Artist

Image
Buttons and Stripes                                I am an artist Growing up, I wanted to be an artist. I think growing up a LOT of people want to be artists. Then reality sinks in and most of us go another route to be able to buy our groceries. In my case, I had a 42 year career managing a translation company, after having obtained a degree in Spanish with a minor in French. That was my vocation. A Feather on the Beach 091523 Along the way, I did take time to paint in oil, and I took some adult education classes like painting, life drawing, and art history at the local community college. That kind of slowed way down when the chosen vocation demanded more and more of my time while also raising a family. That said, I am an artist. I have always been an artist. I never made a living at it, and until about 15 years ago, I never made any money at it either, but I am an artist.                              I, and many of my fellow artists have been frowned upon, treated poorly and even beli
Read more

ESCAPE

Image
In this strange time we are experiencing right now, where it’s really not a good idea to engage with a lot of strangers outside your family, there are not that many places you can go to relax. Restaurants, libraries, bookstores and other locations that are frequented by a lot of people are generally not a good idea for a while longer as of this writing on July 1, 2020. But there are a few places one can go and at least have a change of scenery from the walls of your home, where most of us have spent the bulk of the last few months. For me, this is either down at the boardwalk along the Saint Clair river, where it’s easy to practice social distancing, or it’s the local hiking trail where you might encounter two or three people out for a walk or the occasional cyclist. I always take my camera with me even if I’m just mostly going to walk or relax on one of the benches along the trail. It’s a small hiking trail, but it’s well maintained and there are several trees along the path that I
Read more

The Industrial Look

Image
I like the industrial look. I like the shapes and forms of metallic objects created for industrial purposes even though they were not created to be “art” but were usually only created to be functional.   If you look up at massive electrical towers, there are some interesting shapes to be had. The outline of factory stacks can be interesting, old and sometimes decorative sewer grates are works of art unto themselves. As much as I love the local hiking trail, which I have visited literally hundreds of times in all weather conditions and seasons, and as beautiful as nature images are, there is also a place for the man-made, symmetrical, purposeful item when viewed for more than just its function.   When you look at a piece of machinery, think about what the inventor was thinking when he came up with that particular piece of equipment. Was he or she actually thinking just about function? Or was there also some thought to form involved in its creation? Is this thing painted a certain color?
Read more