An idiomatic title, touching on the whimsical and the well-grounded, resonates when it comes to cloud photography, the topic of this essay. The purpose is to demonstrate the use of clouds as a photographic subject with local images while providing suggestions along the way. Clouds engage our fantasies at an early age. Clouds have long been used in spiritual art to transport fantasies of angels and others on high. The late-18th/early 19th century saw clouds featured in the landscapes of Constable, Turner and Friedrich, among others. Landscape art, and later photography, utilized clouds as modifiers of light and conveyers of mood. Scientists at the time began to classify clouds using a Linnean taxonomy. Mariners, mountaineers, and farmers were using clouds to forecast weather. By the late-19th century, clouds were being used in the development of modern weather forecasting. The Cloud Appreciation Society was started in 2004 to encourage public engagement with clouds through observation and photography. Today, we see clouds that didn’t exist 100 years ago, and AI is playing a growing role in weather forecasting. Cloud photography provides structure to sky and cloud watching, a pastime that can connect one with Nature through fantasies, feelings, knowledge and technique much as other subjects do
Attacked by an angry bird: clouds tickle our fantasies, especially in childhood!
For many years, I photographed clouds by accident as part of an illustration of geological interest. However, my cloud fascination probably began in childhood as friends and I would lie in the grass on a summer day, pick a cloud to stare at, and hope that our efforts would dissolve it. It worked because clouds can be fleeting, something that frustrates artists and photographers. Later, while spending summers in the foothills of Alberta, the rise of thunderstorm clouds provided evening entertainment. My cloud knowledge improved through science courses at school, courses on mountaineering safety, university courses, training as weatherman in northern Quebec/Labrador, and later teaching about them in university courses.
The following images were made in the greater Victoria region over the past 5 years using an Olympus EM5 Mark II and various iPhones. A UV filter and polarizing filter were useful. Minimal post-processing was applied. The system of cloud classification applies globally but locational factors cause cloud types to vary among locations. For example, the best examples of the towering clouds with rain, thunder and lightning, are seen in the west-central plains of North America. Our location on southern Vancouver Island downwind of the Pacific, Olympic Peninsula and Sooke Hills and adjacent to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Salish Sea produces a good cross-section of cloud types in an interesting and supportive sea- and landscape.
As with many nature-related photographic pastimes, being in the right place at the right time is important in cloud photography. At times luck plays a role. However, getting out frequently, being patient, and using cloud and photographic knowledge improves luck. Clouds are fleeting and constantly changing in detail, so acting at first sighting of an interesting feature is important. For digestible cloud knowledge the best source is the Cloud Appreciation Society (see Useful Sources). Even with little interest in cloud photography, some cloud and weather knowledge may aid your landscape and other nature-related photography. Various weather and cloud types present differing photographic opportunities and challenges, especially in their roles in shaping light in the landscape.
Clouds modify the distribution and pattern of light and colour in this image over the Salish Sea. Breaks in the low clouds (stratocumulus) with clear skies above allow penetration of sunlight, producing interesting light effects and appearance of “God’s Rays” (crepuscular rays) emanating from the sky toward the sea.
Cloud types are stacked from the Earth surface through about 15kms of the atmosphere (a zone known as the troposphere). Clouds are composed mainly of water drops and ice crystals but may have some dust, smoke, pollen, etc. mixed in, all of which influence direct and ambient sunlight effects. Recall the orange-red sunrises, mid-day suns and sunsets seen during recent forest fire seasons. Fog, mist and ice fog are clouds that touch the ground and provide muted light and optical effects. Fog and mist are defined by the distance at which objects are visible, with less than 1km being fog and greater being mist. Both mute light and soften details. In scenes where objects, such as trees, are arranged at successive distances with increasing obscurity due to fog, depth and perspective may be enhanced.
Increasing obscurity with distance in fog acts to enhance perceived depth on a morning in Beacon Hill Park when looking away from the light source.
Mist, being more transparent, may not have the same effect but it does soften shapes and light, adding a more “painterly” effect in some instances.
Misty morning looking into the light source at Esquimalt Lagoon
Above ground level, the atmosphere is inhabited by 3 distinct families of cloud types and one spectacular outlier. The various cloud types offer differing photographic opportunities based on shapes, patterns, textures and light effects. In the lower 3 kms are the puffy fair-weather clouds (cumulus) and the flat, dull and wet weather clouds (stratocumulus and nimbostratus). Even those dull and wet weather clouds can provide interesting photographic opportunities and brighten the day and landscape.
Low-level clouds on a dull and damp winter day over the Salish Sea. The detailed texture shown by pouch-like undersides, called “mama”, adds interest.
Mid-level clouds (altocumulus and altostratus) are found between 3 to 8kms. Above that to 15kms are high-level clouds (cirrus, cirrostratus and cirrocumulus) composed of ice crystals in all seasons. The spectacular outlier is a towering storm cloud (cumulonimbus) extending from the lower to the higher level of the troposphere. It is a bundle of energy producing heavy rainfall, sometimes hail, lightning and thunder, and intense local winds. The dynamic structure and a composition of water drops, supercooled water drops, ice crystals and hailstones produce a changing collection of shapes and light effects and provide numerous photographic opportunities.
Cumulonimbus over the Sooke Hills showing a well-defined area of intense rainfall and extending from close to sea level to about 10kms in an anvil-like shape composed of ice crystals.
As noted earlier, clouds and sky have been integral to landscape art and photography as part of the setting, providing perspective, and modifying light and its effects. However, images of clouds alone in the sky can convey an interesting and dynamic image and illustrate special optical features.
A swirling mid-level cloud (altocumulus), perhaps the remains of contrails, with streaky high-level clouds (cirrostratus) in the background over Strait of Juan de Fuca. The small spot of coloured light is a parhelion or sun dog produced by sunlight interacting with ice crystals in the high-level clouds.
In cloud photography, consideration of how landscape or pieces of it may contribute to the image and story is useful. A landscape feature may provide a sense of scale for the cloud. Shapes and patterns in the landscape may enhance the same in a cloud. Similarly, shapes and patterns in clouds can accentuate the dynamics being conveyed in a landscape. In the earlier cumulonimbus image, a small slice of nearby shoreline is included to convey scale and enhance depth and perspective. The following image of a fallstreak hole needed the addition of a scaling object, in this case a fence, to provide some sense of the size of the huge hole that had been punched in the mid-level (altocumulus) cloud layer.
A fallstreak hole in a mid-level (altocumulus) cloud layer over the Salish Sea. These clouds are composed of supercooled (below 0oC) water drops. They can be seeded by contrail ice crystals from passing aircraft which cause the water drops to freeze and fall, creating the hole and the trailing streak of ice crystals that soon evaporate in the lower, warmer air.
Beyond providing scale and enhancing depth/perspective, the interaction of shapes and patterns in the cloudscape with complimentary landscape features may enhance a sense of dynamism in both. The following image illustrates this interaction. In making the image, I thought that the small breakers along the shoreline, if smoothed with long exposure would enhance the streaked mid- and high-level cloud patterns as well as introduce a soft leading line to the clouds. Conversion to black and white simplified the image by removing some of the detail in the original.
Mid- and high-level clouds with softened breakers along the shore from Clover Point.
As noted, locational characteristics do influence the types of clouds seen regularly. The southerly parts of Victoria and the western communities afford a 180o view of approaching weather through the southern sector. Approaching storms, especially in autumn and spring, may be announced by the appearance of a very distinct leading edge called an arcus. The body of a storm follows, often in the form of a cumulonimbus extending to great heights and producing intense rainfall and wind.
An arcus or leading edge of an incoming storm over the Salish Sea. The inclusion of water and distant landscape features provide a sense of scale and the low trajectory of the rapidly moving cloud.
Being on the flight path for many trans-Pacific aircraft, our location offers opportunities to see clouds and some cloud effects not seen prior to the 1940s. Contrails are produced by the freezing of water vapour in the exhaust of high-flying aircraft. In very cold and moist conditions at altitude, these linear ice crystal clouds persist, spread and form a high cloud cover. That cloud cover, which is composed of ice crystals, is transparent to incoming sunlight but absorbs reradiated heat from the Earth surface, resulting in atmospheric warming on balance. With this effect and the gases, particulates and pollutants now being emitted, we have become cloud makers and climate changers, and probably not for the better!
The view south toward Puget Sound and the Seattle-Tacoma region with a high cloud (cirrocumulus and cirrostratus) cover generated by contrails that persisted and spread through the course of the day.
Rainbows and halos are two of many products of cloud and sunlight interaction. Rainbows grab the attention even of cloud-averse folks. They become visible with the sun low in the sky and at your back looking toward a shower. Sunlight penetrates the raindrops and is refracted in the form of the colors of the visible spectrum. The wide vista over the Salish Sea allows for the occasional complete rainbow, sometimes with a larger but fainter secondary bow. For halos, one must look toward the sun. They are common locally with the sun’s rays being refracted by ice crystals on passing through high clouds. The halo forms around the sun, usually with a reddish inner edge, and the light from the halo may accentuate details in the intervening ice crystal clouds.
Double rainbow over Trial Island and Salish Sea from Trafalgar Terrace, Oak Bay.
Early morning halo from Ogden Point with high cloud (cirrostratus) bands visible.
Cloud photography is a pastime that need not take us far from our doorsteps, as was the case with the early sky artists. With our head in the clouds, we can replay childhood fantasies. With our feet on the ground, we can experience our atmospheric home through the lens, indulge our technical and creative penchants, and appreciate the forces of Nature.
Useful Sources: Pretor-Pinney, G. 2006. The Cloudspotter’s Guide. Hodder & Stoughton. Pretor-Pinney, G. 2011. The Cloudcollector’s Handbook. Hodder & Stoughton. Evans, M. 2018. Constable’s Skies. W.W Norton. Graham, E. 2025. Clouds: How to Identify Nature’s Most Fleeting Forms. Princeton University Press.