Cumulus humilis, cumulus mediocris and fractocumulus clouds intermingle over a western desert landscape of the sort first photographed in monochrome large format by the likes of Ansel Adams and Adam Clark Vroman—pioneering photographers who not only noticed and appreciated the sky, but made it an indispensable aspect of so many of their classical landscape images. Note the faint reddish tinge on the bases of some of the thicker cumuli. That’s a reflection of the color of a field of badlands located below those clouds, unseen beyond these striking hills (known as “The Tepees”). I’ve noticed the same phenomenon with lower, stratiform clouds over swaths of open, red-dirt fields in northwest Texas and western Oklahoma as well.
4 SE Adamana AZ (1 Aug 17) Looking N
34.9451, -109.7762Cumuli over the Tepees (Painted Desert)
Cumulus humilis, cumulus mediocris and fractocumulus clouds intermingle over a western desert landscape of the sort first photographed in monochrome large format by the likes of Ansel Adams and Adam Clark Vroman—pioneering photographers who not only noticed and appreciated the sky, but made it an indispensable aspect of so many of their classical landscape images. Note the faint reddish tinge on the bases of some of the thicker cumuli. That’s a reflection of the color of a field of badlands located below those clouds, unseen beyond these striking hills (known as “The Tepees”). I’ve noticed the same phenomenon with lower, stratiform clouds over swaths of open, red-dirt fields in northwest Texas and western Oklahoma as well.
4 SE Adamana AZ (1 Aug 17) Looking N
34.9451, -109.7762