clouds

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Illustration Photography

Phantom Clouds Descend from the Sky in Vorja Sánchez’s Illustrated Photos

In Vorja Sánchez’s ghostly dreamworld, spectral creatures plunge from the sky with long, wispy appendages that grasp onto the landscape. The Barcelona-based artist and illustrator (previously) disrupts otherwise peaceful photos with the massive forms that haunt unsuspecting hikers and farm animals as they peek out from behind a hill or congregate in airborne groups. Prints of the playfully illustrated phantoms are available in Sánchez’s shop, and you can find more from the series on Instagram. (via Lustik)

 

Photography

Menacing Storms Rip Across Remote Landscapes in Black-and-White Photos by Mitch Dobrowner

Photographer Mitch Dobrowner (previously) captures some of nature’s most dramatic and overpowering shows of force in his black-and-white images of storm cells. Living between Los Angeles and Lone Pine, California, Dobrowner often travels throughout the Midwest and Southwest documenting major systems that rage across rural regions. He frames lightning strikes, enormous spiraling clouds, and dense sheets of rain through wide angles or panoramic views to contrast the extreme weather with the vast, remote landscapes. Dobrowner will be visiting the Northern Plains in the next few weeks to catch the area’s storm season, which you can follow on Instagram.

 

Photography

A Candy-Colored Cloud Hovers Over a West Texas Landscape Mid-Thunderstorm

While chasing a tornado near the small town of Earth, Texas, earlier this week, amateur photographer Laura Rowe captured this enormous cloud filtered with pastel sunlight. The candy-colored mass swells above the dusky expanse in the midst of a thunderstorm, and as Kottke notes, the serendipitous shot evokes the saturated, trippy swirls in Milton Glaser’s 1966 poster of Bob Dylan. Prints are available on Rowe’s site.

Photography Science

Tiny Ice Crystals Simulate a Halo Around the Sun in Photograph by Michael Schneider

On a November trip to the Arosa mountains in the Swiss Alps, Michael Schneider snapped a photo using his iPhone 11. The Zurich-based photographer and writer says the image he captured as the fog dissipated shows small ice crystals in the clouds, which break up the sunlight. The crystals’ insides reflect the sun, which is then broken again as it leaves the inside chamber, resulting in the halo of light.

Gizmodo’s Mika McKinnon elucidated the phenomenon when a similar shot was taken a few years ago.

Ice halos happen when tiny crystals of ice are suspended in the sky. The crystals can be high up in cirrus clouds, or closer to the ground as diamond dust or ice fog. Like raindrops scatter light into rainbows, the crystals of ice can reflect and refract light, acting as mirrors or prisms depending on the shape of the crystal and the incident angle of the light.

You can find an analysis by Mark McCaughrean of the atmospheric optics at work in the image below. Keep up with Schneider’s travel writing and the frozen landscapes he frequents on his Instagram. (via Kottke)

Art Photography

Abstracted Dual Landscapes Created Using Cleverly Placed Mirrors

Photographer Sebastian Magnani carefully positions round mirrors in outdoor settings to capture two landscapes at once: the ground below and the sky above. In the ongoing series Reflections, some compositions reflect connected imagery, like blossom-covered grass and a flowering tree. Others juxtapose man-made surfaces like asphalt with organic branches. By removing the usual context of landscape images, Magnani allows the viewer to focus on the textural qualities of the environment, and some images even veer into illusions, as with the cloudy night sky that appears like a full moon.  You can see more from the Swiss photographer, including portraits, on Instagram and Facebook. Magnani has also recently started offering prints of the Reflections series on Society6. (via Bored Panda)

 

Photography Science

Breathe: A Stunning Black & White Timelapse of Thunderstorms Across the Central Plains

Phoenix-based filmmaker, photographer, and storm chaser Mike Olbinski captures approaching storms around his desert home using high definition video, often posting his works to his Vimeo in 4K. Breathe, one of his latest short films, is the first ever work posted in 8K and features a selection of storms shot in 2017 in either the American central plains or southwest. Watch the video above in high resolution to witness the magnificence of each rolling stormcell gather and disperse throughout a variety of open landscapes.

You can follow along with Olbinski’s storm chasing adventures on his blog, and see more of his timelapse videos and photography on his website.