Cold summer weather :(

[Ken Lee]

A bit of a "silver lining" in all of this bad weather: In Massachusetts, the storm clouds have been plentiful. I wish I had time to take more photos of them.

[jp]

Very nice cloud photo. I like the square crop format too. I've liked cloud photos partly based on the influence of the equivalents series, more so than the meteorology aspects.

[Ken Lee]

Thanks !

Last time I saw some, those Stieglitz equivalents are awesome and pretty... mysterious !

[jp]

Thinking about the mystery in equivalents is distracting. Like your photo, they lack scale, reference, location, etc... This creates abstraction, lessening the role of that mystery. They still contain the things you like and have listed.

I'd read about the equivalents a long time ago, but got a chance to see a couple of them a year or two ago when they had a Georgia Okeefe exhibit at the portland maine museum of art. They had some Stieglitz photos and even a couple Ansel Adams photos too.

regarding mystery and abstraction... Sometimes I come across a negative in the darkroom full of goodness. I can figure out the mystery of it by starting at it under a light for a few seconds. But aside from that, I am immediately attracted to it because of various qualities present and look forward to printing it. These qualities are the abstract things we like in most of our photographs regardless of the subject. In the case of the negative the abstracted qualities such as composition, tones, patterns, and other impressions might make a notable impression on the person printing before the actual subject matter is understood by the person printing.

I've never been real big into photographing flowers. If you're looking to express something 100% natural, you really don't know if the flower is representative of someone's masterful garden or something cool discovered in nature, with the macro short DOF etc.. common to flower photos. Elliot Porter has a few nice natural setting flower photos amongst his books.

[Chris Strobel]

I know the weather varies greatly form one location to another, but in my neck of the woods (Great Lakes region) it's been a very cool and wet summer. Between being extra busy at work, and a large number of rainy days (which always seem to come when I have a few spare hours ), I'm finding this is one of my worst years for getting out there and shooting.

Heck, I'm not even putting on much mileage with my digital SLR. Is the weather affecting anybody else this way? Not looking for a solution, just some commiseration.


joe

I'd trade that stormy weather for our clear, harsh shadowed sunny days in a heart beat.For me a clear sunny day means either trying to setup something interesting to shoot indoors, or just not shooting at all

[Simon Benton]

I live in Ottawa and the weather so far has generally been cool and wet. Last week my wife and I spent a few days up at our cottage in Quebec (about 1 hour north of Ottawa) and had the wood stove on for most of the time. This is unheard of in July when the temperatures in the past have been in in the high 70's and mid 80's in July and August.

[Michael Wynd]

Here in Victoria, Australia, we're still in drought conditions (in winter). The dams for our state capital are only 20% full. Most of country Victoria has had well below average rainfall and in some cases have had to truck water in. For those who don't know, Victoria is in the south of Australia and normally has good rainfall. Geelong, where I live, normally has 26 inches per year. So far we've only had about 1/4 of that. If you could arrange to have your rain sent here, we'd appreciate it. LOL.
Mike

[Darryl Baird]

silver lining in those dark clouds (over Michigan) is the lowest utility bills I've seen in over ten years...

[77seriesiii]

Germany has been flat, gray, cold. I like the clouds when you can see the clouds but this crap...Temperature wise, high of 68 and low in the 50s. Missed some great cloud shots yesterday took the dog for a walk saw them and thought, I'll go out later and catch them at sunset...opps, missed that opportunity. Dog loves it so we continue to go on walks and make the best of it.

./e

[Paul H]

It's cold here too, but then it is winter. Loadsa rain, so all the electricity companies are moaning that the hydro lakes are full and they have more trouble justifying ripping the customers off. Loadsa snow on the ski fields, so they're enjoying things! We've even had a bit of sleet and the ocassional flurry of snow, which is pretty unusual. Coldest winter for a few decades.

(As our weather forecast intro reminds us though, Auckland gets on average 1200mm rain per year, but in the late '90's Hokitika (a town on the west coast, South Island) got 18,000mm )