Thunderheads

[Juanito200]

These are from Sunday evening. I looked out the kitchen window and saw this storm system. I grabbed the a700 and 16-105, ran to the field at the end of my street and took these. I wanted to drive somewhere to have some better terrestrial scenery, but the sun was setting fast. I know they aren't much composition wise, but they were some beautiful clouds. The pano was stitched using PSE 7. I didn't lock exposure, so I had to blend the sky a bit... Let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy, John BTW a larger size on the pano can be found here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnleblan ... otostream/

[Greg Beetham]

Hi John, yeah that looks very stormish over yonder. I have a cloud chart that has photos of all the different types of clouds and that first one in the low level cloud section resembles the CL9 Cumulonimbus with anvil top, and the description says: Produces heavy showers, often accompanied by thunder and lightning; also wind squalls with precipitation and poor visibility-if green coloration around leading edges at the base, an indication of possible hail.
Greg

[david antony]

Looking at the large pano, very spectacular John. Also really like the first one. No balloons lifting off into that. ;^)

[KevinBarrett]

That was some fine weather we got the other day, John! I'm glad you got some pictures of it--I was mostly underneath it all.

[aster]

Hey John!

Wow! Some of us are enjoying some autumn on the other side of the Atlantic indeed ! Impressive cloud but I think you did fine for selecting a good vantage point and composing with some interesting foreground elements.

Thanks for sharing, John.

Yildiz

[Juanito200]

Thanks everybody.
My father hasn't been well of late, so I haven't been able to shoot anything very interesting of late. It felt good to be able to capture this scene.
Greg- this system produced some hail, high winds and a tornado in the North Texas area. As Kevin said- he was underneath it. It hit him before it hit me. We only received some wind and rain, no hail thank goodness...My poor Rover lives outside the garage, Dannelle's Volvo is tucked safely away inside the garage...
DA- No balloons that day, but they have been flying about quite a bit lately. I am lucky to be surrounded by many fields for them to take off or land from. I see them all the time either going to work, or coming home.
I'm surprised that PSE stitched the pano together so well. Most of the editing I did was to correct for the fact that I hadn't locked exposure. There were surprisingly few stitching artifacts to deal with.
Aster- Thank you for your kind words. To tell the truth I never would have seen the cloud formations if Dannelle hadn't been cooking steaks for dinner that night... She was searing the steaks, which made some smoke inside the kitchen. I opened the kitchen window, and WOW, I saw the clouds through the window. I knew the sun was setting. so I grabbed my camera and went to the field at the end of my street. I would have liked a better setting, but I was happy to get these.
Sorry for the long winded response. John