Cloud Archives - Bliss Photographics

Posted on September 5, 2020August 28, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Storm Over The Pass

This storm passed over me about 30 minutes before. Those are my truck’s tracks looking back from whence I came. High up the hill from my current vantage point well of the ridge peak. Big views on that side of the hill but a better perspective down the red dirt road up one of the better sledding hills in the winter you’ve ever seen. Maybe 20 cars a day drive this during the summer. Just a few oil well service trucks and ranchers travel this. Trips to town are 70 miles to Gillette Wyoming or 90 miles to Belle Fourch South Dakota. This is a pretty remote spot in Wyotana. It is only 10 miles to the nearest asphalt road here though. All down hill too, literally lol.

That was a deluge of a storm coming over where I was. I tried to avoid the storm but the course was unpredictable without cell signal with affiliated radar. I just need a doppler rig on the roof. Big Hail is NOTHING I want to run into. I’ve got enough damage on my truck from it. I try really hard to stay out of the weather but several storms went through the area and one was bound to run over me. It did. No damage and I got some really fine images from the event. I have about 1/2 an hour of cool phenomena related to a good hail storm that will work their way into my publishing timeline.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Storm Over The Pass

Posted on August 22, 2020August 13, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Wyotana Volcanic Display

Wyotana Volcanic Display (Satire)

So I wake up the other morning and much to my surprise, was a local pyramidal hillock that was blowing it’s top. The steam was rising, the cauldron boiling. I anticipate pyroclastic flows, lahars, glowing red hot clouds and other volcanic manifestations similar to what buried Pompeii. Ash should start falling any moment. Maybe “Sneaky Pete” the windmill will save the day and blow the ash away…

Back to my normal programming: OK, this is NOT a volcano. It takes a properly positioned camera lol. Those are normal clouds up in the sky. Yellowstone is not blowing up. The Devil’s Tower/Missouri Butte Volcanic Neck field about 50 miles to my southeast has not reactivated. No, the Laramide Orogeny has not started back up just yet.

That Butte (called Turtle Butte), is made of layers of river sands stacked on top of one another. The volcanic shape is a result of a hard cap rock which resisted erosion better than every thing else between it and myself. All that rock has been removed by erosion. It is a erosive remnant of all the material that used to surround the hill. Hundreds of feet if not thousands of feet (depending on your location) of sediment has been removed around here. Remember Devils Tower? That used to be a mile or so deep. Now it sticks up 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. That river system essentially removed enough material to expose the harder tower. Same process here except just the top of the hill is harder rock.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Wyotana Volcanic Display

Posted on August 2, 2020July 26, 2020 by Frank Bliss

What Could It Be

Pareidoliacs of the world Unite. I swear on a stack of geology books that I didn’t alter that cloud from how it was that day. The lighting was perfect. There area whole sequence of these photos from two different cameras but I only finished this one. When anthropomorphic faces come out of the natural chaos of things taking notice is prudent. This is indeed a telephoto up close and personal with a floating head (or at least that is what I first and still see in this).

A cloud it may be. If you suffer from Pareidolia as our ancestors did, you have a survival advantage. You see faces quicker out of the edge of the woods, or a human form at distance. In the earlier days of psychiatry, we were considered psychotic with this tendency. I consider it an ability that has been passed on to me through the generations. Apparently it kept my ancestors alive better than those that don’t as easily see faces. (or they just managed to dodge all those mid-evil castle sieges). All of us are a product of those that came before us and these tendencies are handed down genetically from our parents.

So blame your parents if you have this affliction. I must admit as a blond haired boy I would lay on a bank of grass watching the clouds make shapes more than once. Oh wait, I still do it lolol.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands.

Title: What Could It Be

Posted on July 23, 2020July 18, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Cloudy Evening Shark Attack

Sunset Back show, remember to turn around once in a while…. Now I know where the concept of “Sharknado”™ came from. Those fellow sufferers / enjoyers of Pareidolia as myself might see any number of anthropomorphic “things” in this late evening cloud. There are other “figures” hidden within. The random chaos of the storm provides a rich source for our imaginations. You just have to get past the “looking” thing onto the “seeing” thing. Pretty much everyone can see shapes in random data but some of us have it “bad”. My habit is to look for images that will make interesting mosaics or mirrors. This less complex illusion just screamed shark at me. Thusly, it’s image is immortalized now. The digital storage universe of the internet keeps everything we post… all of it….just saying lol. 😜

Actually I note the color gradient from pure white clouds at the top down to orange on the bottom of the deck. This cloud is acting as a projection screen for the natural gradient that is in the sky as the horizon covers the sun. Light passing through hundreds of miles of atmosphere is red to orange in color. Light passing through high atmosphere is white (all colors). The top of the rising storm, bathed in white light. Unfettered by the junk in the air we breath. The lowest part of the storm cloud, is reflecting filtered orange light. JUST below the cloud deck on the far right there is a cloud that is blue / dark. It is in the shadow of the earth.

Sunset you remember is actually horizon rise. It’s the world that is spinning to make that happen not the sun moving lol. In this image the sun had already set, twilight was shooting across the earths surface at 1000 miles per hour away from my lens looking to the east. The line of light and dark called the terminator. That line of night/day demarkation SCREAMING over our head twice a day.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Cloudy Evening Shark Attack

Posted on July 16, 2020July 9, 2020 by Frank Bliss

What Do you See

I take photos of cloud formations that look as if they might be a good test for your anthropomorphic visualizations. Pareidolia is the tendency to see familiar shapes in random data. This totally unaltered image of a small late afternoon thunderhead that wants to grow but turned into perhaps a polar bear with big eyelashes and Grouper Fish lips. Everybody that has this “ability” see’s something different though many of us see the same thing as well. There is some commonality in our “condition. Some will see a cloud, others will let their imagination flow and come up with other alternatives. IT was a beautiful Wyotana Twilight. My favorite time of the day.

Of course it is this ability that we are trying to teach to our computers for facilitating facial recognition. Once AI becomes heavily involved, it will be a big deal. Stay tuned for that. The machines ability to do facial recognition now is amazingly sophisticated. Our brains are more creative but not as fast nor as systematic as the AI will be.

Evolutionary Biologists will tell us that the ability to see faces out of limited information (dark forests) kept our ancestors alive longer than those that didn’t have that ability. The psychiatric establishment at one time considered those with this tendency to be psychotic and often would put the “patient” away for a “treatment” in some wonderful home for the insane. Let’s not forget that piece of history as those that forget such often live to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: What Do you See

Posted on July 7, 2020June 30, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Kestrel Landing Pad

The smallest of the North American Falcons decided to stop by the other day. This is actually the second of 4 images from this timeline. I have yet to publish the other two. I work multiple quality timeline images as this into my portfolio over time with a bulk of the raw files still sitting in a “to finish” folder on my workstation. I often get 10 or more really good images of something, just a little different each one. It’s impossible for me to know which is worthy of work and what is less so. As such I often finish several.

The big storm cloud behind was even more fortuitous to me. I rarely see either Kestrel or good storm clouds. The presence of both is welcome. BTW, As I type this, we just got .6 inches+ of rain which is a saving rain so far. We are in a pretty tough drought this spring so far. I’d like to see some more storm clouds AND more Kestrels while I’m at it. lolol. I think the rain now at the end of June (as I type this) is a bit late for the grass crop. Stunted it is.

These are really beautiful little raptors. Their ability to hoover above a target is legendary. I rescued one on the highway once. I believe it lived if it survived any internal bleeds from the trauma that stunned it. I felt better anyway 🤔😀

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Kestrel Landing Pad

Posted on July 6, 2020June 29, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Lone Tree Ridge Sunset

Getting into position on parallel ridges is certainly a challenge early in the morning. In the evening as this, it’s relatively easy to get there. It’s finding your way back that is the challenge. Role reversal almost across the board. As soon as the sun sets behind that ridge, the whole valley I have to travel into is into dusk and darker environments. Reversing the order of events between a sunset and a sunrise seems to be a universal constant with a few contrarian natural occurrences about.

Sunrise/Sunset. (classical reference intended). For one we rise, the other we set to bed . In a similar vein, it’s hard to get there in the morning and hard to get back at night. “En revanche mon ami”. Unlike humans, the horizon rises at night. However, if you look, in the morning the horizon drops downward in the morning. The Full Moon sets in the morning and rises at night. A lot of events seem to happen right at those two times. It must be a coincidence, or perhaps an ancient biological dependance on the cycle. Just a few more gears driving the wheel of life.

The coming of the light and the departure. It is the appreciation of the process that adds so much to the overall experience I enjoy with this work. I use the term “Terminator Crossing” to describe both sunrise and sunset in one word. If you have never heard of “Terminator” except in connection with “the future is not set” and Arnold, time to google Terminator. You see the Terminator on the moon all the time.

Have a great and safe evening…

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Lone Tree Ridge Sunset

Posted on June 28, 2020June 21, 2020 by Frank Bliss

W Butte Alpenglow and Crimson

That HUGE butte in silhouette(called “W” butte) is a southeastern Montana Landmark. Seen here from across the Montana/Wyoming border 35 miles distant. I’m standing in Wyoming. You can actually see the communications towers that are up there. An 18 inch wide tower at 35 miles is what is called “resolution”. I love how 1200 mm telephotos CRUSH perspective. Really high end camera backs give you very high megapixel count plus high dynamic range. The higher the megapixel count, the bigger you can print the image.

I seldom see naturally totally oversaturated clouds without me setting my camera incorrectly but the sky really was this color. I mention that because it’s looks very harlequin and un natural/odd to me. This is indeed what was down range of my lens that morning. I work very hard to get scenes to be a reproduction of what I experienced live real time. Looking back and forth between my video screen and the actual scene on almost every landscape/sunrise image is a good habit.

My process is to expose ONLY the highlights properly so as not to loose detail in them. I can worry about shadow detail in the digital darkroom. Interestingly, there was no detail in those crimsons back/bottom clouds to begin with. Nature doing the oversaturation is not that common in my experience. These cameras can usually look right through it to the detail hidden in the saturated area. IT wasn’t there to see from where I was…

Location: Sunrise Ridge, Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: W Butte Alpenglow and Crimson

Posted on June 26, 2020June 20, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Sunset and a Wide Lens

At the top of a drainage, standing on the top of a pass, any water that runs off after falling here will go through 5 rivers to reach the Gulf of Mexico. In Wyoming and Montana are located the head waters of many a watershed. The strip roughly 10 miles shared between both states… Wyotana of course does not exists at a place in time and space. It is a mystical place of undetermined dimensionality along the 45th parallel 1/2 way between the North Pole and the Equator. I’ve seen many things that amaze me and quite often remarkably. Having lived here for only 2 decades I have certainly missed a lot and am not as good a rancher as I could have been. Spending anytime up here teaches you respect for the land and for others that endure the hardships here.

This land imaged above is barren of human intervention. Only a few barbed wire fences keep the perimeter on pastures several square miles in size for herds of thousands of cattle. There are by far way more cattle in this land than there are people. Locally we are around 1 person per square mile density… I last heard 125 people were in our voting precinct covering 256 square miles of land. There are a few non-voters under 18 living about but not a lot. We are a community with a lot of elbow room as you can see by our back yards. Closest neighbor is 3 miles+.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Sunset and a Wide Lens

Posted on June 14, 2020June 8, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Perspective Corriente Baby Sitter

This adult female “Corriente” Breed is pulling nursery duty with two other angus calves that are in with her. We have a few white face “Angus” hanging out with a few “Corriente” this year and these were their calves. The calves mothers were nearby. This “Corriente” mother is still pregnant as my Horned gals are on a late June birth schedule. Very soon… I’ve owned this cow “Salt” for the last 5 years. (or she has just hung around and let me stay here too). She has given me a salt and pepper calf each year. This might be her last year as she is getting a little old for breeding much longer.

The “Corriente” breed originate from Spain/southern Europe. Imported into the America’s in 1493 reportedly by Spanish Settlers. I call them longhorns but some have said “they are not longhorns”. As I understand it, the Texas Longhorns were developed from this old stock but I could be wrong. Their most impressive characteristic to me is they are extremely hardy and take very little care. We do run them through the state required vaccinations, worming etc obviously. Other than that, there isn’t much to do for them except find homes for the calves from the previous year.

They are often used in the rodeo ring to rope as calves and to practice practical cowboy skills on around the ranch. Many large ranches have a few “Corriente” calves around just to practice on. “Training up” your “hands” on a ranch is a good “slow time” activity. The HUGE barn on this ranch was built for this. It still could be an indoor calf roping arena if I got all my crap out of it lol. There is still lot of the old memorabilia associated with those calf roping events held back in the 1970’s on the walls of that foot ball field sized building.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands

Title: Perspective Corriente Baby Sitter

Posted on June 7, 2020May 30, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Pronghorn Talking About the Weather

I’m a serious sufferer of pareidolia. (Seeing familiar shapes from random visual data) At least I am not alone as proven by the conversation of these two.

Now bear with me as my Pronghorn Lip Reading Skills are not what they should be. Here is how I translate it. These two gals are called (Left Doe is “Jane”, The Right Doe is named ” Doe” ) . Jane and Doe… 👀

The general topic of conversation was concerned about, “Seeing things in clouds”. “Doe” saw a Bear face. The bear, swallowed by a huge alligator from behind. (Now how do those guys know about Alligators ??) 🤔😜

“Jane” on the left was saying she was seeing a gorilla’s face in the growing storm cloud. “Doe” was all about the bear being eaten by the alligator. Lots of things live in those billowing cloud they agreed. The conversation went on with small talk about the weather being dry this spring. No big storms have dumped on fields this spring. Just little dribbles. Going to be a long brown season with some fires and other topics unique to pronghorn gossip. I’m not repeating the conversation about that “new Buck” on the block…… Rated “PG” this page.

Then suddenly, “Doe” said out of nowhere that Jane looked “fat”. “Jane” snapped back quickly “have you looked in a mirror lately?” Sneering away. Well needless to say the conversation went down hill from there as did the animals. Right down the hill to the left off frame at typically high speed. 😜📸

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Pronghorn Talking About the Weather

Posted on June 6, 2020May 29, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Wyotana Twilight Morning Sky

Wyotana is a mystical place somewhere near the border of Wyoming and Montana. That demarkation line between the two American Redoubt states is 360 miles long. I consider the “Zone” of Wyotana is about 10 miles wide. That makes a total 3600 square miles in this exotic land. That included area is 3 times larger than Rhode Island. Largely unknown, it includes parts of Yellowstone is mostly remote containing some of the most Mountainous country in the US. This is Cowboy Country from the east border of South Dakota west. All the way to the Yellow park boundary on the west.

Wild Wonderful Wyoming and Big Sky Montana have a few cultural differences. These largely result from Montana having more larger population centers. Their population derived from more migrants exiting huge cities on the coast. Wyoming is more rural with mostly rural local populations. There are HUGE areas of Montana is very similar culturally to HUGE areas of Wyoming. The oil industry and blue collar hydrocarbon guys come and go but a rancher is a rancher on both sides of the border. Our ranch IS in both states by the way lolol. Living in a remote rural ranching community on either side of the border is an entirely different existence from living near population. I’ve operated in both environments and way prefer the “long drive to town”.

Oh, the photo… taken 10 days before it posts as a side show to the main sunrise to the left of frame. I love complex skies with spring Alpenglow… 5:15 AM for this capture. My summer nights are getting shorter until the summer solstice….. Tough schedule to work both sunset and sunrise….

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands.

Title: Wyotana Twilight Morning Sky

Posted on May 24, 2020May 16, 2020 by Frank Bliss

French Poodle or Gorilla ?

If you look at the left side of this and let your imagination go… a french poodle begging… On the right side, a Gorilla looking fierce. Or if you want to really let your imagination go. I see 11 other faces in that rising cumulous cloud. (soon to be a thunderstorm as there was a LOT of lift in the air that day. Many of these thermals grew into big storms that hit to our east. .

Seeing faces in clouds or other natural scenes is termed: Pareidolia. Historically this tendency diagnosed one with psychotic symptoms/ “abnormal”. Now we are teaching computers to do it for facial recognition purposes. Making familiar patterns out of random data is a common “affliction”. It’s not just clouds of course. Hearing hidden messages in music is a similar effect. Any pattern the human mind creates out of literally random data is symptomatic.

Of course the state of medical/psychological science has improved a tad from those early days. I consider them sprits in the sky. This was caught glancing back behind me to the south won a warm evening is a good habit. Many photographers get tunnel vision working sunsets and forget to glance around. The back shows are often better than the main sunset if your chasing light like I do. I suffer horribly from this mental disease seeing faces and animals in almost every scene I look at. Some days it’s worse than others though lolol. 😜👀📸

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: French Poodle or Gorilla ?

Posted on May 23, 2020May 15, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Early Twilight Crimson Skyline

Driving two track roads during Nautical twilight up high in the backcountry is easier when there is no snow or mud on the ridges. It still takes me 10 to 15 minutes to drive up to this location I call sunrise ridge. By the time I arrived this morning, it was still Nautical Twilight with maybe 30 minutes to go till sunrise. The sky starts to light up quickly from here on. , the air is crisp, the smell of sage and pine are rife.

There is little wind this morning which is uncommon. I start to feel the sunrise coming on. It’s something you can feel akin to a quickening. 👀

This was taken in early May. Dry year so far but mud is my current nemesis because I loath to leave tracks. I have a new vehicle now with excellent capabilities so I should be a productive spring up on the ridge tops. Looking up this hill for proper perspective, no lower yellow band yet. The yellow hasn’t made it this far yet.. The red from rays of the sun that made it through the gauntlet of hundreds of miles of atmospheres and moisture. The cloud bottoms were wave troughs dropping into the light and turning red as a result. As bright as the highlights are, the over all scene was dark. This you can see by the darkness of the foreground where I was sitting. It’s below the camera’s threshold of Dynamic Range. My eye’s could see landscape here. Not the camera though… 👀👀📸

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Early Twilight Crimson Skyline

Posted on April 29, 2020April 22, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Two Windows in the Storm

A busy time lapse photo from a good camera on a steady tripod set up under the awning of my homesteads deck. The lighting you see is ambient inside our “compound” from various yard lights accumulated over 10 seconds…. The storm provided a 500 microsecond extreme flash giving me internally illuminated clouds. As the storm travels, it’s leaving stars in it’s wake in the pure dark sky. Got em!

Photographers notes:

Basically combining Time Lapse and Flash Photography .

This is not a composite in fact the bright star is actually a planet… Jupiter. The flash of the lightningwas instantaneous but the stars needed the 10 second time exposure. The results fit like a glove 📸. About 10 seconds at ISO 300 with f6 (ish) should get you close if you have a tripod, and a storm that leaves stars in it’s wake… Pouring rain (see dark areas)..

I wonder how long I can expose stars without streaking? 🤔🤔👀📷

500 divided by the Focal Length of your Lens = The Longest Exposure in seconds) before Stars “start to trail”.

For example; let’s say you’re taking a shot with a 24mm lens on a full frame camera. 500 / 24 = 21 seconds, which you can round to 20 seconds. Use the rule, it works. Hope this helps you avoid streaks unless you WANT them lolol. I think longer the better for that to taste…😜

Have a great Wednesday night all and be safe.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Title: Two Windows in the Storm

Posted on April 15, 2020April 9, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Golden Hour Windmill Morning

Windmill Wednesday, Windmill Junkies Unite: I know there are a bunch of you that are withdrawing from a paucity of windmill images in your news feed. I will try to keep up with your insatiable demand. You know who you are but don’t let your partner know you look at this stuff…. 😜📸

This is “Sneaky Pete” the Windmill doing what he does best. Photobombing my landscapes. I only tolerate him for his negotiation skills with the various creatures around the ranch. I give him credit for many good animal “sittings”. (Years long narrative). He is also a reasonably good scale for an event this big lolol.

Sunrise was just starting to crack over the ridge who’s shadow I stand in. The Windmill up slope reaches up to be illuminated. But the ramp leading to it is in the dark. This corresponds to around 18 minutes after sunrise most of the year. To see rain shafts moving across the valley beyond this shallow ridge is a sight to behold. The morning sun’s color components from orange to the non-colorcast white clouds high up. All in a smooth gradient up the center of the frame.

The high clouds reflecting white uncolored light back to my camera. That light passed through much less atmosphere. The orange light cast by classic atmospherically filtered photons. Those survivors reflected back to my camera are what you see. Shorter wavelengths usually become absorbed on the long trip through the atmospheric gauntlet/filter doing it’s job. . . 🤔👀😜

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Golden Hour Windmill Morning

Posted on April 7, 2020March 31, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Who Owns the Nest

There are two bird silhouettes in this image. I watched this little melodrama unfold through my camera lens from about 100 yards out. The Raptor on the left.. (I’m thinking a Red Tailed Hawk. Interested in staying overnight there it was. It’s a big comfy Heron nest . 50 feet up the fully mature Cottonwoods with a wonderful sunset going on below this frame off on the horizon. This was happening real time though. Here’s how it went.

The Raptor had spied this nest. He obviously had designs on the roomy spread. I don’t know how long Great Blue Herons have nested in this spot. So things got really sporty between these two with the Raptor heading out for the clouds beyond. I’m pretty sure that nest has been there a LONG time. Wood really decays slowly out here. I would not be surprised if it were 30 years old. It has been there since I moved onto this ranch in 2000. There have been birds nesting in it every year I’ve been here along with the other 5 nests. They have the best position on the tree line.. I’ve seen hawks nest down this line of trees. Smaller Raptor nests are pretty hard to find camo’d in the trees.

I would indicate that that Herons beak could pierce the raptor to the heart. If I were a hake, I would not want to fight a Great Blue Heron. Roughly 5 pounds at 5 feet tall and very capable of eating about anything silly enough to stay in front of it. These guys are basically dinosaurs in the mind of this Paleontologist. They just lack a tail and teeth. Everything else is pretty much there. All the Dinosaurs didn’t die off at the end of the Cretaceous. Some of them, the Avian Dinosaurs lived on. Flying around us today they are. 🤔👀⚒📸

Location :Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Who Owns the Nest

Posted on April 3, 2020March 27, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Clouds over BigHorn Mountains

View from up on Ridge one here on ranch. The window to the Big Horns is IFFY this time of year from this far away. My truck/tripod is 130 miles out for this capture off the highest point around the place. The timing on this was mid-Civil Twilight. The sunset is far right off frame looking from the Montana/Wyoming border to the southwest toward the range.

Full Screen is a good choice for this. Twilight over the BigHorns this night was so obviously gorgeous. I had to resort to a short time exposure to catch it. The timing on this sunset is very late in Civil Twilight. When the alpenglow colorcasts the snow on the Mountains, I get interested 👀📸.

Civil Twilight after sunset ends about 28 minutes after the sun goes down 8 degrees under the horizon. It’s usually the best time to get those crimson and yellow skies. Orange here is a mixture. Atmospheric Ice causes this phenomena caused by refracted light passing through. Only the red wavelengths which have survived through hundreds of miles of atmosphere light the cloud deck.

The long lenses I use crush the perspective of distance. I’m almost always using telephotos to bring in just the BigHorn Mountains filing the whole frame. It takes about a 800 mm long focal length to fill the camera frame side to side with the tallest part of the range. The black ridge at the bottom is 40 miles out. The clouds behind the range are around 200 miles out I would suspect. The distance is hard to put into proper frame. Those 13000 feet high mountains appear smaller than the thumb on my outstretched arm from here.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Clouds over BigHorn Mountains

Posted on March 26, 2020March 19, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Dragon Cloud Rising

Part of the joy of my job is I get to see odd things occur now and then (OK, every day). I sometimes consider the other places I’ve lived during my travels. Then I compare them to the 20 years I’ve spent on this wondrous place. Not even close .

Magical things often appear in the clouds in front of me. I am just a stenographer taking notes about the big stage productions in front of me. Click click of the keys of the steno machine or the camera. No difference in effect. The details are in the dark here for this fantasy image. Imagine the mood of that moment in time and space. You could hear thunder rumbling 24 miles out.

I can not record all that I see with my cameras. They possess superhuman sight much better than mine but their ability to see dynamic range is limited. It is for instance VERY hard and essentially impossible to take a stars photos behind the full unveiled moon. You could see it with your eye easily. Not so much cameras. My best camera (a Sony Alpha 7R4) has 15 fstops of dynamic range. My only good eye (I’m close to blind in one eye from an injury) has at least 21 f-stops of dynamic range. Far greater ability to see a black cat in a coal bin in a dark room and see the detail in it’s hair. Like seeing the tree silhouettes here under the very dark blue clouds. This was a tough shot to get :).

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch,Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title : Dragon Cloud Rising

Posted on March 10, 2020March 3, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Twilight Delight Eye Candy

I attend virtually every interesting sunrise/sunset that occurs up here on the high ridges along the Wyoming/Montana border. The Bliss Dinosaur Ranch has about an equal amount of land in each state. Most of my images have parts of the scene either the sky or the ground of each or the other state. (now that’s a sentence lololol_😜

Musings:

I see a lot of heavily saturated sunsets on forums and I see them too occasionally. I record them accurately. What I’m saying is.: This is the actual scene as it occurred without any highlight/color tomfoolery. I love this image as it is with detail in the colored areas, not solid color. My technique is all about exposing the highlights correctly. I’ll worry about the shadows in the digital darkroom. I left the landscape silhouette without bringing out what detail exists there. I seldom molest highlights.

Recording then presenting them exactly as I experienced them. I about said “Catch them on Film”. ……. I paused and considered the accurate replacement phrase. What exactly am I doing with this Mirrorless Digital Camera. No film here. These things use a digital chip inside to record the image in Red/Green/Blue dots. Technically it’s recording a series of 1’s and 0’s in sequence that when run through first Sony then Apple’s machinations via software. Of course Adobe had a hand. Then Facebook attacked what I uploaded with a compression process. The resultant jpeg/file quality drives me crazy sometimes. The full sized files are amazing. Full screen is a must here for sure as this is an image that needs to spread around your field of vision. 📸👀

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands *Wyotana”

Title: Twilight Delight Eye Candy

Posted on March 8, 2020March 2, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Dragon Art by Frank Bliss

Did I mention this is art?

In this kind of work, I will take a photo I deem appropriate and digitally mirror it inside of the digital darkroom. This wonderful spotlit sunset was a real image but I instantly saw the possibilities. My web gallery contains the original image. There is a phenomena that occurs with human eyes seeing bilateral symmetry. We seemingly recognize the resultant shapes as anthropomorphic forms, mystical creatures and even familiar faces. This tendency in the human mind to make order out of random shapes, we are teaching to computers for facial recognition.

Along the center of the image is what I call the “Totem Pole”. I see at least a dozen different faces, shapes, noses, eyes, teeth, flames. A host of magical mythical creatures contained within await your study. All of these emerge one at a time as you study the shape. Relax your stare and let your imagination rip with this creation. The main one I see is a dark dragon face with fangs and flames. It’s probably just me lolol.

I did take some liberty with the hue/saturation control with this images. These shapes were natural and are un-edited in their entirety. I love finding these images. All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy and this is one of my Creative outlets. My main focus in photography (pun intended) is to catch landscapes and creatures as photorealistically as I can. These ART/Photo hybrids are a release lol.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Dragon Art by Frank Bliss

Posted on March 7, 2020March 2, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Spotlight Through the Storm

Spotlight Through the Storm (2:1 Diptych) Full screen is a must here.

Someone looking over the land. This is the “Eye of the Sky” If I have ever seen it. I am certainly going to mirror this image as artwork soon. . It’s almost a perfect face now just with the right eyelid closed.

Musings about World Events:

We find ourselves in turbulent times of strife, loony political debates, pandemics, and the economic misery sure to follow. I try to observe such from as far away as I can in my daily work on the remote prairie.. The uncertainly of the change in lifestyle we are about to undergo is staggering in and of itself. It is likely that our reaction to such dangers is worse than the dangers themselves. A paraphrase of “the only thing to fear, is fear itself”.

I suspect that the general order of things will change abruptly this spring as a result of the country mobilizing to reduce the threat from this newest latest danger to our way of life. Getting prepped this ripple in society is a good idea. It “might” be about to get real. Worse prolonged.

I look at scenes like this above with the awe it deserves from my insignificant viewpoint on the planet. As a nation, we are watched over much as here from above. In the scheme of things, this societal stress is but a bump in the history of the world. I see a future historians looking back at this time as one of two narratives, two worlds and one supply chain.

Hopefully our little world is sheltered somehow by our remote location. There is certainly “some” societal stress to come. It is my hope to avoid most of the mess but it is my prayers to all in the major cities for the coming year. It’s going to get interesting. Let me know if it get’s sporty out there.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Spotlight Through the Storm

Posted on February 25, 2020March 2, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Half the Sky Summer Sunset

Half the Sky Summer Sunset (full screen suggested)

This Triptych image (3-20×20 inch) prints is 180 degrees wide and is a full 180 degrees of the sky. A full East to West Sky

I’m estimating this young developing Mesocyclone is 80 miles distant/ 40miles wide. Relatively small for a Rotating mesocyclone. It was growing at the time. The sunset for that day is ongoing. But at exactly the opposite side of the sky as well. There are just plain intense downpours under these storms sometimes. Depending on how fast they are moving makes you lucky or flooded locally lol. These only rain on a few percent of the ground area up here. Spotty! The ground under them becomes totally soaked if the storm doesn’t move.

We had a summer Mesocyclone years back that sat over us and dumped 4.5 inches of rain in 45 minutes. Water was sheet washing down the hill behind my home and skirting around the house. Almost nothing got in but that slope was angle deep in sheet wash. I have since re-landscapes using mounds to redirect any potential sheet wash off the long hill to our back. It’s only been a problem once in 20 years of living here.

Creation of a Triptych:

Really wide images like this are of course composites created by taking multiple images and “stitching” them together in the digital darkroom. I point out that there is a crescent moon compounded by the setting sun. The buildings of our ranch on the lower right edge several miles away.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Half the Sky Summer Sunset

Posted on February 18, 2020February 10, 2020 by Frank Bliss

MesoCyclone with Moon at Night

This MesoCyclone was Veiling the full Moon. Enough to catch the stars visible to my naked eye. Using a 20 second time exposure, some lightning flashed during the interval. Details in the clouds that are seldom to a camera pointing at the full moon. Most you see are fakes or composites. Time exposures over a second tend to overexpose the full moon badly. Even a moon that was unveiled. Limitation of the technology.

Straddling South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, this rotating storm was around 100 miles across. Containing the energy of an atom bomb expended over it’s life.

The view I had of this storm was perfect enabling me to photographed it. I was up in the higher backcountry for almost 2 hours with 6 different camera lens combinations from before sunset to well into Astronomic twilight under the full moon. Being backcountry means any light on the terrain is ambient from the flash and the moon/stars. No other man made light sources in view from the highest mountain top around kind of backcountry.

Various colors are way saturated which is what time exposures do. I actually really dampened down the purples that were native in the camera’s software in this image. 20mm lens, cropped in a bit. I wouldn’t go over 20 seconds with a 20mm as longer would have blurred the starts. That time varies with the focal length of the lens so look it up on google lol.

This ranks as one of my personal favorite images of the year. There are a few others….🤔 Taken Mid Summer 2019. 2×3 aspect.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: MesoCyclone with Moon at Night

Posted on February 11, 2020February 4, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Growing Mesocyclone SW Quadrant

I’m estimating this young developing Mesocyclone is 70 miles distant/ 50 miles wide. Relatively small for a Rotating mesocyclone. It was growing at the time. The sunset for that day is ongoing exactly behind me in about 15 minutes from this capture. There are just plain intense downpours under these storms sometimes. Depending on how fast they are moving makes you lucky or flooded locally lol. These only rain on a few percent of the ground area up here. Spotty! The ground under them becomes totally soaked if the storm doesn’t move.

That was a rough storm. Tragically a local cowboy from a nearby ranch was killed in that storm. A truck full of locals went out to see what the 100 year water dump did, drove to one of their herds to check them, road was fine. Drove back the road had washed out. That cowboy was a passenger in that truck. County Emergency Management called me to close the road off from my side of the washout. The runoff went through a major country road that literal gully washer did. It was a major culvert to replace and a big job. We couldn’t get to the highway from that road for a while.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Growing Mesocyclone SW Quadrant

Posted on February 6, 2020February 26, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Summer Storms Sneaking Around

A little Throwback Thursday for you this evening…. Too much winter weather for my taste even though it’s been a relatively mild winter so far.

The weather that mid-summer after noon was a bit sporty to say the least. This “little” cumulonimbus storm off in the distance was one of several that went through the area that evening. Several of them developed into severe mesocyclones a little down the road in South Dakota. We got a couple of smaller storms wet us down that day.

I imagine in my musings that that Butte is a local Volcano and that cloud is the eruption. IT actually looks a LOT like the images from Mount St’Helens back in late 79-80. Back of the Butte blew out it appears to this geologist lolol. It made me do a double take as I first saw it.

We do have dedicated crop areas but we are a dry land ranch with no irrigation. We need that water to raise all the grass we do. Just one cutting of hay so far each year over 20 years. Pretty consistent. It’s all about the massive (not) 14 inches average rain we get a year. Most of that being from snow fall accumulation in the spring.. Last year 2019 was phenomenally a wet/cool year. We had the lowest forest fire risk ever. I didn’t even fill up my fire truck with water all summer.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Summer Storms Sneaking Around

Posted on February 4, 2020January 30, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Snowy Spotlighting Sunset

Looking westward across the 40 mile wide Little Powder River Valley , a cloud bank will snuff out the light within minutes. I am often sent home early with no “photos in the can” by cloud banks shrouding the horizon. When I head off road to climb up ridges chasing light, the mid-winter wins sometimes. This night I went up hill. Over 300 square miles of landscape presents here, all covered by this snow blanket. We get most of our 14 inches a year of precipitation during the winter.

You will note how effectively Yucca plants have a tendency toward collecting their own stash of water. The result of this is to soak the ground around them. The Yucca is a great plant up here providing food to the deer all year long. Deer from both species eat the seed pods from Yucca which grow in significant quantities up here. Yucca flowers are edible too I ‘ve seen ungulates take advantage of them every year. The deer grow fat on them. Already eaten, mostly deer have consumed the seed pods. By Mid-Winter, the deer have consumed much of the food reserves on this ridge. They have moved on to other pastures. Typically they head to sheltered gullies with water near by.

If it’s going to be winter, I wish it would freeze the backcountry ground. As I type this it’s been staying around freezing and just above for weeks. Mud in the backcountry completely blocks me from access as I don’t want to rut up my two track trails.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Snowy Spotlighting Sunset

Posted on January 31, 2020January 31, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Lone Tree Lamp Shade

Up here in the backcountry I use what ever is handy to reduce the glare from that big Light Bulb in the sky.

Lone Tree on Veiled Sun. When I get a heavily veiled sun, I’m all about getting it behind and in focus with terrestrial objects. It’s always a good thing when this particular tree lines up with astronomic objects (sun moon). The Lone Tree on a Ridge is about 1/4 miles out in this capture. The sun is a little further behind.

Photographic Musings:

The clouds were very thick and obscuring with the sun blinking in and out from behind the veil. I am as always, reactive to the light with only a bit of premonition to guide me to the next spot from here. Half the game of photography is knowing when you got the shot and it’s time to move on. Otherwise you spend too much time at the site and miss other opportunities. I move pretty rapidly from interesting situation/alignments of the sun or the moon by driving along parallel ridges. I work the “Shadow” line by driving it and “seeing” what develops as I move. The cool stuff to photograph as in “I know it when I see it”.

There are times I see things that are virtually impossible to capture. A fully lit sun behind this tree is a common occurrence but without neutral density glass filters in front of the camera, even these Sony Super Cameras , this would be impossible. The tree limbs would be totally washed out. I never use glass filters or even do I use a pretty much standard UV haze filter. I find they get in the way of the image more than “fixing ” what they do. A UV filter does protect your lens glass from scratches though and is probably worth it for what you would do mostly. I point cameras at the sun a lot and glass in front of the lens has been an issue in the past for me. Just saying….

Disclaimer:

Don’t point a DSLR camera into the sun. It can blind you if you look into the eyepiece and it will probably burn a spot in your digital image chip in the camera. I use a full frame mirrorless Sony Alpha 7R 2’s ,3’s and 4’s which I routinely point at the sun. Resultant… no apparent damage to the cameras over several years of this.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Lone Tree Lamp Shade

Posted on January 19, 2020January 11, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Crimson Cloud Roll Sunrise

Driving two track roads during Nautical twilight up high in the backcountry is easier when there is only this much snow on the ridges. It still takes me 10 to 15 minutes to drive up to this location I call sunrise ridge. By the time I arrive, it’s already into Civil Twilight with maybe 15 minutes to go till sunrise. THe sky starts to light up, the air is crisp, the smell of sage and pine are rife. There is little wind this morning which is uncommon. I start to feel the sunrise coming on. It’s something you can feel akin to a quickening. 👀

This was taken over a month ago in early December. We had lighter snow then than now. There is 6 inches flat everywhere on the ridgetops at the moment. You have to be very careful going off the ridge tops. The snow that use to cover them has been blown of to the sides. There hasn’t been much drifting yet this winter and I have a new truck now with excellent capabilities so it should be a productive winter up on the ride tops.

Looking up this hill for proper perspective, the lower yellow band is bright alpenglow. The red from rays of the sun that made it through the gauntlet of hundreds of miles of atmospheres and moisture. The cloud bottoms were wave troughs dropping into the light and turning red as a result. As bright as the highlights are, the over all scene was dark. This you can see by the darkness of the foreground where I was sitting.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Crimson Cloud Roll Sunrise

Posted on January 19, 2020January 11, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Mesocyclone Incoming

I’m estimating this young developing Mesocyclone is 50 miles distant/ 50 miles wide. Relatively small for a Rotating mesocyclone. It was growing at the time. The sunset for that day is ongoing exactly behind the rain shaft so the bottom of the storm is pretty much backlit as well as your going to see through one. There are just plain intense downpours under these storms sometimes. Depending on how fast they are moving makes you lucky or flooded locally lol. These only rain on a few percent of the ground area up here. Spotty! The ground under them becomes totally soaked if the storm doesn’t move.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Mesocyclone Incoming