When I was primarily a photographer (2008 – 2014) summer clouds were my favorite subjects.  I was always in pursuit of the best formations.  Summer around here in NC is the best time to capture dramatic cloud interactions.  Here are some of my old favorites from the good old days.  Feel free to click to enlarge.

 

 

Now I am pretty excited about seeing what video can do to capture these same moments.  To be able to see up close what the cloud is doing, how it is unfolding or building is something that can’t be captured or seen unless it is timelapsed and accelerated.  I find that it takes about 6 minutes minimum to create anything worth watching…due to how much you must compress the timeline.

On a recent night out, I was hoping to capture a lightning storm with driving rain curtains, but the rain abated, the lightning stopped and what I ended up with was lovely fast stacking and falling clouds right in front of the setting twilight.

One thing that was quite challenging on this night of shooting was that I saw the clouds forming up as I left a restaurant in town.  I raced home to get my camera stuff from inside of my air conditioned house.  The outside humidity was probably around 95% and the air temp was close to the same.  It  took nearly 30 minutes for the cold camera body and mirrors, and lenses – to stop sweating and heat up to match the surrounding temps.  I should have foreseen this.  I used to shoot all the time at the Butterfly House at the Museum of Life and Science and the air in there is set to match weather in the tropics.  The first thing you do when you get into those kinds of places is let your camera breathe and adjust…you just don’t even bother shooting for the first 20-30 minutes.  Everything will be fogged up.  This was the longest I ever had to wait though.  I had to detach everything and let it air out for a solid 30.  I missed what I came to get…but got something I still really like and would have overlooked had my camera been working from the start.

Anyway…here is my latest…and don’t forget when viewing that Vimeo defaults the viewing res to the lowest standard.  To see the HD version click on the HD button and adjust as needed.