Growing up in Philadelphia, summer thunderstorms would bring amazing cloud formations almost every day. It wasn't until I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, which almost never has thunderstorms and usually has a blue featureless sky, did I realize just how much I had taken those summer afternoon clouds for granted. On a trip to Washington DC one spring day, I noticed just how spectacular the sky was. While everyone else with a camera was photographing the White House and the Washington Memorial, I was shooting the sky. Sometimes, we must look up.
By now my fascination with clouds is apparent. This image was taken on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. We had just arrived at the hotel after about 12 hours of flying on a red eye from San Francisco with a layover in Atlanta. We got to the hotel and one of the most intense thunderstorms I've ever seen unleashed itself on the island. As it was dying down, the sky, took on a sulfurish yellow color. It was absolutely amazing. I'd never seen the sky turn a shade of bright yellow, and only bright yellow before. I grabbed my camera and ran out on to the beach, looking for a way to capture the clouds before the swept away over the ocean. I found these concrete stairs, literally on the beach, that went no where. I set up my tripod and began to fire the shutter: click, click, click. Of the frames that I captured, this was my favorite. It almost looks computer generated, but it isn't. The sky and clouds here were real, and the color is how I remember it. A marvelous first day in the Bahamas.
Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon located on Navajo land outside of Page, Arizona. Over thousands of years water flows over the desert mesas, carving slots into the underlying sandstone. Slowly, layers of sandstone are removed, just a few millimeters at a time. The result? An amazing feast for the eyes and mind. Sunlight permeates the canyons from the top, and as it's reflected off the layers of sandstone, the colors and textures change. Throughout the day, minute by minute, the colors change from orange, to yellow, to purple. The canyons are pure magic, and are some of the most amazingly peaceful places on earth.
