Tag: SeeingThingsInClouds

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Old Man North Wind

Old Man North Wind
Old Man North Wind

Old Man North Wind

I laughed out loud and then took dozens of images in all sorts of frame compositions. I liked this particular capture the best. There are several very good cloud creatures in this image. The hoot is the face on the upper gray cloud. The north wind as it were … Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale” The Selfish Giant (1888) exemplifies the North Wind as a man who “was wrapped in furs. He roared all day. I’ve always pictured him in my minds eye as a grey old guy… here he is caught on camera.

I thought as this was taken, it was an exercise in futility for the old guy. It was early June and 80+ degree days are already past us. My sense of normalcy was safe or so I thought. Of course it’s snowing in the mountains as I type this now. Looks like the old fellow got his way after all. I have seen snow in every calendar month of the year in the 30 years I’ve lived in Wyoming. I now have garden crops in and am hoping we will avoid the worst of the old North Winds effects.

Meanwhile on the rest of the image here overlooking both Montana and Wyoming. I’m also imagining a swan diving it’s head under the surface of a frothy ponds below the old guy. Pareidolia takes no captives and gives no quarter. If you have it, and don’t take definitive action to turn away, your likely to see all sorts of anthropomorphic shapes in clouds. If you do have this tendency, welcome to the club of us “suffering” from this malady.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands.

Title: Old Man North Wind

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Eagle in the Clouds

Eagle in the Clouds
Eagle in the Clouds

Eagle in the Clouds

A series of storms moved through the area a mid- may afternoon late.. I had been photographing them for several hours with the photosession running well into twilight. Shot the heck out of this… Here the sun has set but the clouds are being lit up by the long traveled red wavelengths. Up high the clouds are white which is the unfettered light that is just skipping off the atmosphere. The crimson had to fight it’s way to reflect off those clouds. IT’s a classic red to white cloud sunset gradient projected on the clouds by our star. The colors generated from path differences of the light. The shorter wavelengths just don’t make it that far so you have red (longer light waves).

At any rate, is that an Eagle? Condor? Turkey Vulture? Any body for a Unicorn?? I suffer horribly from Pareidolia (seeing faces or shapes of familiar objects in clouds). Carl Sagan theorized that hyper-facial perception stems from an evolutionary need to recognize — very quickly — faces. There is an evolutionary advantage to those that can see them quickly and act accordingly. I act by grabbing a camera in manual mode, set the ISO to 325, aperture to F11 and speed 1/100th rested 12 mm lens.

That is a VERY wide angle lens grabbing a big chunk of sky for this wonderfully complex sky production. Captured of the trailing back edge of a much larger Mesocyclone where I was driving around the sun lit side of those storms. The show that evening continued well into twilight with me driving two track roads up in the backcountry to capture it.

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

Title: Eagle in the Clouds

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Cloud Mirror by Frank Bliss

Cloud Mirror by Frank Bliss
Cloud Mirror by Frank Bliss

Cloud Mirror by Frank Bliss

I spend a portion of the time spent examining scenes before me for candidates requiring a “Mirror/Mirror” treatment. As I suffer from Pareidolia badly. Seeing faces or familiar shapes in clouds or other random scenes is a genetic defect. I received this from both my parents. I have it so badly that I see 1/2 of a face. This controls compositions with the intent to use the 1/2 face to make a “whole’ face from. I have no control over this attribute of mine. This mental game was considered a psychosis historically. Not so much now… Honestly the tendency runs wild most of the time. I must admit. I’ve been known to cultivate such imaginings a time or two. 😜👀

SO, this is ART…. I re-emphasize the ART part…. If it wan’t ART I would have removed the dark blue (it’s a blue Monday post after all). I find that clouds are mostly grey expect near twilight lol. So I take a real photograph, and mirror it right to left (in this case). Color to taste and that’s all I did to this… 2 minutes maybe extra digital darkroom time over my normal 15 minutes. Nature comes up with the creatures that live in the “totem pole” that runs up the center where the mirrors merge. There are SEVERAL more faces buried in that area if you study it. Now if I could just figure out how to make a living with this

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

Title: Cloud Mirror by Frank Bliss

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French Poodle or Gorilla ?

French Poodle or Gorilla ?
French Poodle or Gorilla ?

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 ?

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Protective of the Sun by Frank Bliss

Protective of the Sun by Frank Bliss
Protective of the Sun by Frank Bliss

Protective of the Sun by Frank Bliss (This is an ART/PHOTO Hybrid)

Do you see things in Clouds? 👀📸 What do you imagine here?

Now that I mentioned this is art, I would point out that only 1/4 of it actually is art, the rest of it is a 100 percent real image. All work and no play make photorealistic Frank a Dull Boy. I like to follow up on the potential for this kind of work on a particular image if I get the time/chance. I usually have to make the time in the middle of an otherwise photorealism filled day. In the world of the digital darkroom, I get to play a bit. This is a slightly modified Wyotana borderland sunset from last week. One week is my turn around time now from taking an image to possibly posting it.

To create this, I took the original image which just didn’t have the left side eye. The nose is a real lens flare which I carefully lined up in the camera to the 12 o’clock position. The flare was in the original capture. So I mirrored the right eye and the clouds onto his left cheep from the original side. Then up high I mirrored the outline of the head right to left. So the left eye/cheek, part of the clouds up high. Nothing else was messed with other than color a bit. But this is art and all rules go out the window. As I was taking this, the possibilities were obvious to me in the composition stage of this capture. Long before the click.

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

Title: Protective of the Sun by Frank Bliss

Title:Protective of the Sun