Head in the clouds

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Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
― John Lubbock, English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath, from The Use Of Life

When I was in elementary school, one of my teachers assigned us an art exercise to sit outside the classroom and draw the clouds. It was her way of teaching us about the different types of clouds by engaging us and tapping our creativity, instead of just going through the textbook. I remembered drawing them and falling in love with clouds. I even loved the names they were given – cirrocumulus, cirrus, and cirrostratus (the high clouds); altocumulus, altostratus, and nimbostratus (the mid-level clouds); and stratus, cumulus, cumulonimbus, and stratocumulus (the low clouds).

Flash forward several decades and I find that when I walk our dog, Sammy, and our previous family dogs, I have tended to look down at the sidewalk. Of course, I look at the homes in the neighborhood and the landscaping and flowers and trees. But I usually – most noticeably before shelter in place – spend that time thinking things through, either with work or my novel. On what I call our shelter-in-place walks (simply walks that David, Isabella, and I have taken around the greater neighborhood), I have paid more attention to details, to plants and flowers, trees and animals. But that’s for another blog post. I discovered the clouds again. One evening in particular, the clouds were so ethereal that I took photographs with my smartphone, fully know that they could never capture the wonder that I saw with the naked eye at that moment in time.

And yet, I was pleasantly surprised that many of the photos did their best to capture what I saw and produce in me an awe, a catch-the-breath moment. So I thought a few weeks ago, when I have time, when I make time, I want to share my cloud photos. And here they are. Enjoy.

This photo was taken on our early shelter-in-place (SIP) walks up the hilly Moeser Street and then a detour to get to El Cerrito’s Memorial Grove. It was about 5 o’clock on a mid-March middle of the week afternoon. San Francisco is on the left, with Alcatraz not far off. You can see the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin on the right. I didn’t think the clouds would be adequately captured, but there is a sense of the heavens in these clouds, an expansiveness, possibilities, even if they be filled with awe and dread.
Here’s an even farther view out of the Bay and city of El Cerrito below us. Here the clouds and sky really make one feel quite small and insignificant.
Final shot of that evening’s walk, with a focus on the clouds and open space in the sky above the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands.
I couldn’t escape the rooftops and telephone wires, but I had to capture this full-bodied cumulus cloud. I think about the plane rides where you go through a bank of clouds and there’s this other-worldly sense to it. I imagine to myself sometimes what would it be like to be in the middle of that cloud. Like thick Tule fog, no doubt.
When the sun is behind the clouds, these amazing shadows and shapes edged with light capture your attention. It was a windy late afternoon when I looked up and admired the clouds.
The other thing I love to do is watch clouds change shape and sail on by on a windy day. These clouds had such texture to them.
Stepping back, I wanted to capture this march of clouds being prodded by the wind.
The rest of the photos are from a single evening in May where I was mesmerized by the clouds and I confess that I couldn’t curate the many photos I took, so please bear with me. Here is a mix of feathery cirrus clouds and cotton-ball cumulus clouds.
A trace of chiaroscuro on this photo.
More cirrus clouds intermingling with altocumulus clouds. This reminds me of a painting I imagine that my artist friend, Tana would paint.
I love the layering of altocumulus clouds against the cirrus clouds, how the dark altocumulus clouds contrast and come to the forefront.
This photo looks surreal. It reminds me of what a Raphael sky would look like. The sky is an amazing shade of cornflower blue. The cirrus clouds look like they’re raining down on the altocumulus clouds, with their white glow in the background giving this photo a three-dimensional feel to it.
When you go farther out with the camera view, it feels like a cloud fireworks – cloudworks – is erupting in the sky. I would love to see my artist friend Kathy render her interpretation of this photo.
The “tentacles” hanging down from these clouds remind me of jellyfish. And note the light edging the clouds in the top right-side of the photo.
The picture before this one was cropped. Here’s the full view. You can see the shadowy altocumulus clouds below the wispy cirrus clouds above it. I love the light and shadow play.
It was a half-moon evening. I love how the cirrus clouds around the moon looks like smoke from a cigarette and the subtle shades of blue in the sky and clouds.
Stepping back for the full effect, with the half-moon in view.
Cloud ripples and inky blots.
More loveliness. A close-up of the photo below. The white cloud on the left seems to sparkle.
The sky or the heavens?
The half-moon and the raining clouds. Goodnight Clouds, Goodnight, Moon.