How do You Handle the Sky in B&W Landscapes

[Michael Heald]

Hello! As I've experimented with B&W landscapes, it seems that the white sky acts like a drain to the photo - the viewer's eye is drawn to the white sky and from there off the print, since the sky usually bordes the edge of a print. To avoid this, I've tried to find a way to darken the sky (red or polarizing filters) or make sure that there are dramatic clouds or some other framing element in the picture that holds the viewer's eye in the frame.

I went back through Ansel Adams's "Examples", Wynne Bullock's "The Enchanted Forest", and Edward Weston's "The Last years at Carmel" and they same to avoid the sky unless they changed the tone of the sky as Adams did with "MoonRise" and "Church and Road", or concentrate on objects, such as Weston did at Carmel.

I looked at Dykinga's "Nature Photography" and the blueness of the sky dramatically enhances many of his photos. The sky seems to work much better for color than for B&W it seems to me.

As a result, to me it seems that the sky is something that seems to drain the life out of B&W landscapes (unlike color) and needs to be changed either with filters or by finding something to keep the viewer's eye off the emptiness of B&W sky, like dramatic clouds and compositional frames within the photograph itself.

Do other folks find the sky to be more of a problem in B&W landscape as opposed to color? How do you handle it?

Best regards.

Mike

[Eric Leppanen]

Personally, I think a good dramatic sky can have an even bigger impact on B&W prints than color! If you look at some original Adams prints (I visited the AA touring exhibition several years ago), the clouds looked luminous, surreal and absolutely magnificent. "Clearing Winter Storm" and "The Golden Gate Before the Bridge" are good examples in your "40 Photos" book (the prints in the book don't do justice to the originals). IMO those dramatic clouds are a hallmark of Adams' work.

As for techniques to enhance the visual impact of clouds, I sometimes use a light or medium yellow (sometimes a red on rare occasions) filter to enhance cloud contrast. A polarizer can also sometimes work, although it is less useful when using wide-angle lenses due to uneven polarization (e.g., the left part of the sky will appear lighter/darker than the right part). A ND grad filter can even work too, to better hold cloud highlight values in a high contrast scene.

A completely empty sky usually is not much fun for either B&W or color photographs. Unless you are trying to convey a sense of vastness, I think a completely empty sky is usually a candidate for cropping.

Another key to "sky management" is to make sure there is sufficient color or tonal separation between the sky and landscape. If sky and landscape are insufficiently differentiated, then the entire image suffers. Here again, proper selection of color contrast filters (to darken the sky while hopefully leaving the landscape largely alone) or a polarizer can help. It is obviously easier to separate the two when shooting color film, although having both a solid color AND tonal difference will make the separation most convincing.

[John Kasaian]

I find that an orange filter will usually give me a tone more like the one I see without 'overdramatizing' the sky.

[Ralph Barker]

I think your assessment of the sky situation is close to dead-on, Mike. You either need to wait for it to be interesting, do something filter-wise to make it at least reasonably interesting, or exclude it from the composition. Empty skies, I think, generally give the image viewer too much empty space within which to get bored.

On the other hand, I could envision the rare high-key landscape in which the utter desolation of a spot could be the subject. The salt flats in Death Valley with an on-the-deck camera position might lend itself to that treatment with an empty, almost white sky.

For me, the way I develop and print, a #25 red usually does the trick with blue sky and good clouds. For others, an orange, yellow, or even yellow-green might work better. Otherwise, I try to exclude the sky from the composition.

There is, of course, the old trick of compositing an interesting sky neg with an otherwise sky-boring neg. Doing that with negs in an enlarger takes some skill, however.

[Bruce Watson]

...it seems that the white sky acts like a drain to the photo - the viewer's eye is drawn to the white sky...
If the sky is, in fact, white then you have a valid point. No amount of filtering is going to help a full overcast sky either.

I tend to make photographs with lots of sunlight. I like sunny skies, and the skies in my prints are predominently a mid to light gray. What clouds there are tend to be white and fluffy but don't dominate the scene.

When necessary I'll use a yellow or, more likely an orange filter to darken the blue sky and make the clouds stand out a bit more, but again this won't work with full overcast.

I guess in general I work with smaller scale things when the sky is overcast and try to take better advantage of the softer light. I'm not a big fan of grand vistas with flat light so I don't normally work that kind of image. My theory is that we are making photographs of light, and need to find compositions that take advantage of the light we have to best effect. So for full overcast sky, I generally work with subjects on the ground and leave the sky out of the image.

[Frank Petronio]

But maybe those empty meaningless skies are simply telling you that it is an empty meaningless photo? And maybe you need to hunt a little sharper to find something so strong that the sky doesn't matter?

[paulr]

The master of the empty sky was Timothy O'Sullivan. in the 19th century, when emulsions were blue sensitive, skies always printed white. Most photographers considered this a problem (for reasons like the ones you mention) and included as little sky as possible.

O'Sullivan realized the value of negative space, the way painters had learned (and the way modern painters and photographers would experiment relentlessly in the decades to come). He found ways to make a big white shape interesting. It had to be an interesting shape, and it had to play off of other large and small shapes in the landscape. If you compare his work to the work that came before, you'll see how radical his approach was. And how interesting it still might be today.

Of course now you have panchromatic film, so there can be tone and texture in the sky. A lot or a little. you really have an incredible range of options ... as wide ranging as the different kinds of skies you'll encounter. Sometimes the sky is set off against the land with blazing contrast; other times you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Both expressions can be beautiful and worth exploring.

And of course, there's no need to include the sky. The horizonless landscape is a rich modern tradition. It brings a whole different sensibility and characteristic abstraction. Its masters include Weston, Frederick Sommer, and William Clift

Personally, I like the sky to look like the sky, whether it's blank or full of drama. I'd rather drink bathwater than look at another red-filtered western sky, oozing and billowing with Wagneriean melodrama. But that's just me. More on that in the recent thread on cliches.

[Ron Marshall]

I concur with what Paul said below. A blank sky can be an interesting part of a carefully composed image. I'm speaking of others work I have seen, I'm not quite there yet. I try to incorporate something in the forground to break-up the sky such as tree branches, if it will enhance the composition.

One of the first films I tried when I began LF was Ilford Ortho, which of course left the skies white. But I planned the compositions with that in mind and was quite happy with the results. Very fine grained film but too slow and poor reciprocity.

[David Karp]

I think even a blank sky can be interesting if used properly. For example, a thin section of sky across the top of an image can be used effectively as a border, or to give the image context. In such cases, clouds are not important, and perhaps a detriment. We just take what the light and the weather give us, and create something of our own from that.

Regarding filters, I usually don't use anything stronger than a yellow #12. (Of course, I have used everything up to a Red #25. One of my favorite photographs has a cloud that reminds me of a hammerhead shark photographed over the landscape using Ilford SFX in 120 and a #25. In that case, the landscape is there to serve the photograph of the sky, instead of vice versa.) I think that the filters we use also depend on where we live. If I lived somewhere else, a stronger filter might be needed to accomplish the same thing I can accomplish out west with a #12. (At least that is what some photographers who have worked elsewhere have mentioned to me.)

Finally, filter selection may depend on your film selection. The T-Max films were designed to render a scene much as it would be rendered with a traditional film and a #8 yellow filter. So, if you use T-Max, then maybe you would not need as strong a filter. That is why John Sexton told us at a workshop that he rarely uses a filter. He does not have to. His film of choice, T-Max, has one built in for him.

Was it Szarkowski who said that Adams's photographs were often photographs of weather rather than the landscape? I think it was, in an interview in Ric Burns's documentary on Adams. Cliche or not, (I think not) I love The Golden Gate Before the Bridge. (Developed in Pyro I believe - Now lets see this thread really get going!)

[paulr]

Was it Szarkowski who said that Adams's photographs were often photographs of weather rather than the landscape?

i think he said that (in the context of landscape) adams was one of the first whose work was more about weather than about geology. he was photographing ephemeral scenes ... changing clouds and changing light. this was historically important because adams was part of the first generation that COULD do this. Go back much farther, and emulstions lacked the spectral sensitivity (see O'Sullivan, above) and the speed to capture much more than the rocks and trees.

[Capocheny]

Michael,

Some times, there's just nothing you can do with an empty, cloudless sky other than to just wait for another day to photography the scene.

Photographing either early in the morning or later on during the day also helps since there tends to be more clouds in the sky.

And, I concur with Eric... having an expansive sky in a B&W image can be more far more appealing than in color... if it's handled properly.

A red, orange, or yellow filter usually does it for me. Personally, I love a dramatic sky! :)

Cheers

[Bill_1856]

It's one of the big problems photographing landscapes in the Eastern United States -- skys so white that no filter and/or polarizer is ever gonna darken it. If it's too bright, you just burn it in a little when you print it.

[MJSfoto1956]

Although it is an anathema to many photographers one of my favorite American pictorialists of all time, A. Aubrey Bodine, regularly composited dramatic skys on top of "ordinary" scenes. The resultant images have an unearthly, surreal quality. He was way ahead of his time. And yes, he did shoot large format!

you can see his images here:

http://www.aaubreybodine.com/

(I have no connection whatsoever with this site or his estate)

J Michael Sullivan
Editor/Publisher, MAGNAchrom
www.magnachrom.com (http://www.magnachrom.com)

[David Karp]

The mammoth plate photograph exhibit at Yosemite demonstrates how photographers in Watkins's era frequently composited a photograph of a cloudy sky with a cloudless sky in a landscape photo. They even had an exhibit with two different photographs, each of which had the same cloudy sky!

[paulr]

Although it is an anathema to many photographers one of my favorite American pictorialists of all time, A. Aubrey Bodine, regularly composited dramatic skys on top of "ordinary" scenes. The resultant images have an unearthly, surreal quality. He was way ahead of his time.

How is he ahead of his time? i haven't seen his work until now ... it's very nice ... but stylistically it looks a lot like the late pictorialist/early modernist kinds of work stieglitz was doing two and three and four decades earlier. if anything he strikes me as anachronistic.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Wether blank skies are good or not is a matter of opinion and like many orifices in our body we all have them. This does not address your question, so here goes.

The way I deal with blank skies is the following:

1.- testing, if you know the skies are going to print white, then why do you develop the film to do this? YOu should do some testing so that a high contrast range scene can be printed as you are seeing it.

2.- choosing the right film, this is one of the reasons I use Tmx 400. It has an extended red sensitivity so the skies do not print white. Of course, what you gain in one side you loose in another, if you like and are used to the tonal relationship of more classical films then tmx films might not be what you like.

3.- as you noted, filters.

The attached picture was taken with Tmx 400 and no filter.

[John Kasaian]

On my last outing with the 8x10 I shot some geologic formations on a rock face with hardly any sky showing---not a bad thing because the sky was blank, but the overall experience was unsatisfying. Rocks are usually old news. Not much going on unless its a spewing volcano or avalanche or something like that. Its kind of like nature taking a nap, like a snow scene only the nap is a couple of thousand years longer than the usual snow scene. A dramatic sky adds a sense of Nature as a living, active persona. It is often harder to shoot if you're in a location thats not sheltered form wind, but man, its living. Thunderstorms are like Nature singing opera while the mountains and sea play supporting roles.

When there is no drama in the sky, you can minimize it or wait for a front to move through. Mountains attract towering cumulus in the Sierras during the summer. You can almost set your clock for the hour the weather arrives.

Cheers!

[MJSfoto1956]

How is he ahead of his time? i haven't seen his work until now ... it's very nice ... but stylistically it looks a lot like the late pictorialist/early modernist kinds of work stieglitz was doing two and three and four decades earlier. if anything he strikes me as anachronistic.

Oh yes, he is definitely a throwback if you focus on his style -- a style I'm quite fond of, I'll admit. I should have been more clear: I was talking about his layering many images to create one. Yes yes, it had been done before by others. But here was a guy who was quietly bucking the trend (at least in the 50s and 60s) of the "decisive moment" and Ansels "pure" images (now that's a stretch!). I see his work as somewhat of a prequel to what many would later do in the 1990s with multiple layers and Photoshop. Nothing more.

BTW: his prints are outstanding -- they have that great depth that only darkroom masters ever deliver.

[Michael Heald]

Hello! Thank you for the insights and suggestions.
At times, when I'm looking at the ground glass, I'm thinking in color. The color of a bare sky can be quite appealing, but when the B&W is processed, its bland and lifeless. Part of shooting B&W for me will be continued training to pre-visualize and to "see" in B&W. Best regards.

Mike

[Ken Lee]

Try using an ordinary yellow filter and a polarizer at the same time. The sky values can be "dialed in" according to taste, and vegetation is not darkened, as it is with deeper colors, such as orange and red. This photo (http://www.kenleegallery.com/html/gallery/cornfield2.htm) required no adjustment of the sky whatsoever, other than rotating the polarizer to suit taste.

[Ole Tjugen]

I didn't see this as a problem until I ran out of my customary film and tried another.

It seems that Ilford FP4+ has reduced ble sensitivity compared to most other films, and I had never realised the importance of this.

So I use a yellow filter now, with all other films.

[Frank Petronio]

I dunno, those fancy skies seem so over dramatic to me, like people are trying to make up for other shortcomings with a cheap effect. I rather like the luminosity of a big bright sky like in a Robert Adams landscape. It also feels a little more "modern" to me after seeing so many red-filtered skies.

Especially with LF film where you really have highlight detail, I love it when I see just a hint of Zone 8.5-9 tone in a high-key sky. Afterall, that is the inherent quality of the medium used to its best effect -- to paraphrase our hero Eddie Weston -- because even the best digicams have a hard time with those subtle, barely there highlights. Of course I can fake it in Photoshop but seeing a silver print with those delicate highlights is pretty much the nuts.

[paulr]

I see his work as somewhat of a prequel to what many would later do in the 1990s with multiple layers and Photoshop.

I don't know, I think those techniques come squarely out of late nineteenth century pictorialism. Especially the way he applies them. The victorians were the ones who invented compositing, and who came up with the idea of mating the sky from one negative to the land or sea from another.

[paulr]

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/O/osullivan/osullivan_vermillion_creek_canyon.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/O/osullivan/osullivan_sand_dunes.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_cones.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_trianon.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_tree_sceaux.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_parc_de_sceaux.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adamsr/adamsr_columbia39.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adamsr/adamsr_newworld2.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/watkins/watkins_cape_horn.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/weston/weston_grass_against_sea.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/weston/weston_white_dunes.html

[tim atherton]

http://www.utoronto.ca/ams/news/131/images/41_500.jpg

http://www.utoronto.ca/ams/news/131/images/52_500.jpg

http://www.equinoxgallery.com/works/14322.jpg

http://www.consarc-ch.com/URLnuovo/galle/basil/basmil.jpg

http://www.consarc-ch.com/URLnuovo/galle/basil/baszur.jpg

etc

[MJSfoto1956]

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/O/osullivan/osullivan_vermillion_creek_canyon.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/O/osullivan/osullivan_sand_dunes.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_cones.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_trianon.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_tree_sceaux.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget_parc_de_sceaux.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adamsr/adamsr_columbia39.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adamsr/adamsr_newworld2.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/watkins/watkins_cape_horn.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/weston/weston_grass_against_sea.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/weston/weston_white_dunes.html

thanx PR for the links -- very nice pictorial photos. I hadn't seen some of these before. Unfortunately I don't see one composited sky in the bunch. I was kinda hoping you'd be able to show us some from the 19th century!!! (after all skies is what this thread is about) ;)

[Maris Rusis]

If the sky is blank I let it go and structure filtration and exposure for the foreground elements. When making a standard white bordered gelatin silver photograph from the resulting negative I flash the top of the paper to put in just a whiff of tone. This way the eye registers where the sky ends and the white border starts without losing the sense of luminosity appropriate for a bright blank sky.

The whiff of tone is a grace-note that is not easy to do but looks good to sophisticated viewers. The alternative approach one sees all the time and merely confirms that any beginner can burn a sky to black.

[paulr]

thanx PR for the links -- very nice pictorial photos. I hadn't seen some of these before. Unfortunately I don't see one composited sky in the bunch. I was kinda hoping you'd be able to show us some from the 19th century!!! (after all skies is what this thread is about) ;)

oh, i was just collecting some examples of great photographs made with blank skies.

they're were a lot of composited skies, like this one:
http://photography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/hunting/hunting11%2D24%2D7.asp

i'll look around for more. some of the landscape photographers were basically in the postcard and poster business. they worked for studios that also employed sky photographers and compositors who would throw skies and foregrounds together. a lot of them are hilarious ... clouds overlapping the horizon; cumulous clouds printed upside down, etc. etc. ... it's nice to be reminded that crappy workmanship isn't a new invention.

[tim atherton]

thanx PR for the links -- very nice pictorial photos. I hadn't seen some of these before. Unfortunately I don't see one composited sky in the bunch. I was kinda hoping you'd be able to show us some from the 19th century!!! (after all skies is what this thread is about) ;)

here's a couple of possibles

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/Muybridge/img0029.jpg


http://www.eastmanhouse.org/inc/exhibitions/eloquent.jpg

[Ken Lee]

Wasn't film orthochromatic in the old days ? In other words, wasn't it mainly blue-green sensitive ? If that was the case, then skies would look white, even in the western parts of the US, where they tend to be a dramatic blue - especially in the higher altitudes.

[MJSfoto1956]

here's a couple of possibles


i'll look around for more. some of the landscape photographers were basically in the postcard and poster business. they worked for studios that also employed sky photographers and compositors who would throw skies and foregrounds together. a lot of them are hilarious ... clouds overlapping the horizon; cumulous clouds printed upside down, etc. etc. ... it's nice to be reminded that crappy workmanship isn't a new invention.

Cool! Well I take my words back. A. Aubrey Bodine was indeed an anachromism then! (long live anachromism!) More importantly, you've given this poster some food for thought regarding skies and how to handle them.

I do have a question though: is compositing a sky cliché? ;)

[Ed Richards]

This is one of mine. I had driven for 2 1/2 hours to shoot this bridge, second trip. First was overcast. Beautiful sky when I left home - I checked with local web cams. When I got there, pure white blue.

Ocean Springs Bridge - Post Katrina (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/HTML/4x5%20-%20000808%20-%20ptr.htm?size=1&exif=)

[Michael Heald]

Hello! I like your use of the sky as a composing tool. Clouds would have detracted from the theme, in my opinion. Also, the sky isn't a pure tone throughout, especially at the print borders, which helps keep my eye centered on the photograph. Best regards.

Mike

[tim atherton]

Wasn't film orthochromatic in the old days ? In other words, wasn't it mainly blue-green sensitive ? If that was the case, then skies would look white, even in the western parts of the US, where they tend to be a dramatic blue - especially in the higher altitudes.

Basically yes - that was the main reason they put in fake skies

[Mike Lopez]

The master of the empty sky was Timothy O'Sullivan. in the 19th century, when emulsions were blue sensitive, skies always printed white. Most photographers considered this a problem (for reasons like the ones you mention) and included as little sky as possible.

O'Sullivan realized the value of negative space, the way painters had learned (and the way modern painters and photographers would experiment relentlessly in the decades to come). He found ways to make a big white shape interesting. It had to be an interesting shape, and it had to play off of other large and small shapes in the landscape. If you compare his work to the work that came before, you'll see how radical his approach was. And how interesting it still might be today.

Of course now you have panchromatic film, so there can be tone and texture in the sky. A lot or a little. you really have an incredible range of options ... as wide ranging as the different kinds of skies you'll encounter. Sometimes the sky is set off against the land with blazing contrast; other times you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Both expressions can be beautiful and worth exploring.

And of course, there's no need to include the sky. The horizonless landscape is a rich modern tradition. It brings a whole different sensibility and characteristic abstraction. Its masters include Weston, Frederick Sommer, and William Clift

Personally, I like the sky to look like the sky, whether it's blank or full of drama. I'd rather drink bathwater than look at another red-filtered western sky, oozing and billowing with Wagneriean melodrama. But that's just me. More on that in the recent thread on cliches.

Paul, thanks for the commentary on O'Sullivan. I knew his picture from "Looking at Photographs," along with Szarkowski's discussion of it in that book, but now I have a book of O'Sullivan's pictures borrowed from the library. Very nice use of white.

[MJSfoto1956]

This is one of mine. I had driven for 2 1/2 hours to shoot this bridge, second trip. First was overcast. Beautiful sky when I left home - I checked with local web cams. When I got there, pure white blue.

Ocean Springs Bridge - Post Katrina (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/HTML/4x5%20-%20000808%20-%20ptr.htm?size=1&exif=)

I really like your "plain" sky here. It is rather graphic. Certainly no need for clouds given the subject matter.

But I do have a question: did you use a Polarizer on this photo?

[Leonard Metcalf]

It is simply another compositional element, which needs to be considered appropriately. No different to the wind, or the direction of the lighting. If it works take the photograph, and if it doesn't move onto another one. If you are looking through your past images and notice many with boring skys that don't enhance the composition then make an effort to stop taking these photographs. Yes I occasionally filter (yellow, orange, red, blue or green), and yes I occasionally use the white area in my compositions, but also if it isn't right I don't even bother.

[Ed Richards]

> But I do have a question: did you use a Polarizer on this photo?

No, a #29 red, exposed at +3 stops over metered. It was shot with a 90mm on 4x5.

[photographs42]

It is simply another compositional element, which needs to be considered appropriately. No different to the wind, or the direction of the lighting. If it works take the photograph, and if it doesn't move onto another one. If you are looking through your past images and notice many with boring skys that don't enhance the composition then make an effort to stop taking these photographs. Yes I occasionally filter (yellow, orange, red, blue or green), and yes I occasionally use the white area in my compositions, but also if it isn't right I don't even bother.

I have to echo what Leonard says. Sometimes white skies work. Generally, I would like a little action in the sky. But when there is nothing there I just let it be white. As for it blending with the mat, I don’t think that’s a problem. There are a gazillion shades of white and the bright white mat board I use isn’t exactly like the white of any of my skies.

Here is one of my most popular images:

http://www.jeromehawkins.com/kewaunee_lighthouse.htm

Jerome :)

http://www.jeromehawkins.com/

Here are a couple more examples:537538

[Gary L. Quay]

If the sky is washed out, I use infrared film. I use yellow, orange of red filters to darken the sky and accentuate the clouds. If I don't have infrared film, or can't do anything satisfactory with a white sky, I point my camera downward.

--Gary

[Rory_5244]

Lovely examples photo42

[photographs42]

Lovely examples photo42

Thanks Rory. I actually have a lot of examples on my web site.
Jerome

[Alex Hawley]

Some times, there's just nothing you can do with an empty, cloudless sky other than to just wait for another day to photography the scene.

Very true.

But, as others have aptly pointed out, there are times when a cloudless sky works. I remember being told once by a critiquer that "good B&W photos always have nice fluffy clouds in them".

Horsepuckey!

[JW Dewdney]

But maybe those empty meaningless skies are simply telling you that it is an empty meaningless photo? And maybe you need to hunt a little sharper to find something so strong that the sky doesn't matter?

i agree much! Look at the bechers' stuff for example. The desolate blank sky really can even HELP if your subject matter is quite interesting.

[Capocheny]

Very true.

But, as others have aptly pointed out, there are times when a cloudless sky works. I remember being told once by a critiquer that "good B&W photos always have nice fluffy clouds in them".

Horsepuckey!

Hi Alex,

And, I agree with your comment as I do with others who promulgate a cloudless sky that works.

I was just saying what I did for the shooters who have actively decided that they don't like a cloudless sky and, therefore, are questioning what they (and others) have done (or, can do) to make the sky less "bland." :)

FWIW, I do think negative space can sometimes help an image... it's a matter of ones perspective.

Ken,

That's a brilliant image of the field and cloud formations - there's a lot of power in them that clouds! :) IMHO, if that sky would have been cloudless... I wouldn't think the image could have evoked the same emotion. :)

Cheers