Clouds Over KLIA

I just came back from an amazing 6-day holiday trip to Taipei. The good thing was I got to sit by the window on the plane & got some pretty nifty shots of the clouds in the sky.

This was before the plane took off at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Accumulating Altocumulus Altostratus

Accumulating what?!!

It has been a very educational experience for me doing this blog on nothing but clouds. Sometimes it feels like I'm watching the Discovery Channel.

Now I think these are called the Altostratus.

And I think the Altostratus at the bottom is meeting some Altocumulus at the upper left hand corner. That is probably as interesting as watching paint dry on the wall.

This hobby is dangerous. I am in grave danger of becoming a meteorological geek.

The Towering Cumulonimbus

I'm beginning to learn the names of clouds. Saw this huge towering one rising into the sky like a giant.

I wonder if the Hiroshima bomb went up as high, & I wonder if Burj Khalifa is as tall.

Burnt Clouds

Do not be alarmed. 2012 is another 2 years away. Clouds like these do not exist, at least I've never seen them before.

These photos were photoshop-ed cos I wanted to bring out the little details & colours that the naked eye wouldn't be able to see.

I know there are probably many true advocates of pure photography out there, those who are sworn enemies of anything photoshop-ed. But I really can't help it, the filters really bring out another dimension that weren't visible before.

Mountains of Clouds

Photographing the sky is not what you can consider an easy task, at least not for me. 

Firstly, I'm not the kind of guy who appreciates fishing prawns the whole day in one of those prawn shops. So if you were thinking that I'd be driving around town cloud-hunting, you're very wrong. Don't get me wrong. I wish I could, but I just don't have that luxury of time. Maybe I'll do that one day when I retire, if the clouds are still there.


Secondly, it's not easy to find the perfect angle to take a clear shot at the sky. There'd always be other elements vying for your attention. Big fat trees, electric poles & telephone cables all want to be in the frame.


So in the end, you'd just have to snap whatever you can get & then do the cropping when you get home.

 

Now, I don't know how you would find these pics. But I think I've managed to salvage a bit of dignity here.

 These remind me of Zhang Yimou's 1/3 framing in Yellow Earth, where the heavy sky sits on top of the thin land below.

Kuching Sky at 6.30pm

I found this quite alien.

But it reminds me of something more common & worldly - Wella hair care, Olympic torch & somehow, Indiana Jones' whiplash.

Cloudy but Sunny

It was raining in the morning & the sky persisted with grey clouds pretty much throughout the whole day. But as usual around 4pm, the sun was low enough to give a nice highlight. So I caught this pic.

Not sure if you can read anything from it, or whether it moves you in a certain way. All I know is that Kuching is one of those places on planet earth that still has beautiful blue skies, even on a cloudy day.