Mammatus and Crepuscular

The saying goes "better to be lucky than good" but personally, I'd rather be both. I much prefer the saying "chance favors the prepared mind". Simply put, be ready to take advantage of whatever happens across your path. Let me illustrate...

Today a colleague of mine was up at our house (the Middle of Nowhere he calls it) working out the particulars of a holiday photography event we are doing together. Meaning, of course, that we were inside most of the day polishing ad copy, constructing sets, all that fun stuff that makes the lives of photograpers the envy of all those around them. Well, maybe not. Add in that the weather has turned blustery and drizzly and the day was productive but not the kind of thing you's use to sell a new life in the English countryside.

Driving back from picking up my son from the bus stop I caught a flash of color out of my eye and as we rounded a bend in the road. The hedgerow opened up and there it was: mammatus clouds on fire from the setting sun. Mammatus clouds are very cool, like hanging balls on the underside of a cloud resulting from sinking air. Despite their sometimes fierce look they actually signal the latter stages of a storm and for me, are the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow. As if this sight weren't good enough, bby the time I dragged my cameras into the driveway the sun had sunk below a band of clouds creating spectacular crepuscular rays (god beams, sun rays).

The entire event lasted perhaps 10 minutes from when I first saw it and then, gone. Lucky because I live in a place that these two sky events happened, good because when I ran in the door everything was ready to use and in the scant time available I was able to, I think, capture the essence of what I saw.

I love my job, I love my job, I love my job...

~James