I've been looking at clouds for a long time now. Really looking at clouds that is. Most people only look up at the skies to see what the weather is doing. Or as children, to see if they can spot animals or creatures flying above them. In my teenage years I learned to fly gliders, which taught me to understand what was happening in the sky. This involved watching clouds to identify where the lift was that would keep the aircraft airborne.  Clouds can also show where weather fronts are and what the weather will be doing.  So different types of clouds mark where different types of lift are. For example, cumulus clouds mark thermals. To be a good pilot you need watch a cloud as it develops to see which part of it is producing the best lift. I don’t fly anymore but I haven’t been able to stop watching clouds and trying to work out what they are doing. I'm fascinated by what is happening in the skies to produce all the different shapes and varieties of clouds.

 

I'm not big on quotes but, as Leonardo da Vinci said;

 

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward..."

 

The beauty of photographing clouds in the UK is that we get a lot of them! I don’t have to travel far to capture the beauty of clouds, unlike my landscape photography, which has taken me the length and breadth of the UK.