November 9th, 2007 admin
Cole Thompson is a local photographer who produces amazing black and white images. In his recent newsletter he told a story about this photograph:
The following is a glimpse into the artistic process we don’t often see:
Sometimes people think, including photographers, that great images come from extensive planning, great hardship and long waits. While that sometimes produces a great image, I’m usually just lucky enough to stumble onto something great and I take the time to photograph it. Here’s how I came to create “Clouds;”
My family and I had been in the car for 3 straight days as we drove home from San Francisco at the end of a 3 week vacation. We were tired; tired of hotels, tired of restaurant food and tired of driving. The kids were even tired of watching movies!
We were two miles from home and everyone was stirring, excited about getting out of the car and seeing the animals. In mere minutes we would be home!
But then I saw it, an enormous thunderhead, the largest I had ever seen in my life!
My first thought was; “I have to stop.”
My second thought was; “The family will kill me!”
My third thought was; “You made a promise that you’d never pass by an opportunity again.”
So I told my family that I was stopping for a photograph, and while they were screaming at me I quickly set up my equipment and took the shot. Because the cloud was so large (the above mentioned meteorologist said it was about 20 miles wide) I took a photograph of the left side, the center and the right side.
When I got home and looked at the images , I knew I had something special, but I also knew that a lot of hard work would have to go into it before it was perfect (see one of the original images below). First I “stitched” the three images together to make the large panoramic image you see above. Then I had to convert the image to black & white and bring out the power and fury of the cloud. I did this by “dodging and burning” the details in the cloud with a graphics tablet. It’s a bit like painting on the photograph to bring out the highlights and darken the shadows to improve the contrast.
My goal was to have the viewer feel some of the size and majesty that I felt standing there that day. Unfortunately the small image above does not do it justice, you really need to see the five foot version and then say to me “Wow! Where was that taken?”
-Cole Thompson
This is one of the original images used to create that beautiful black and white cloud image:
Please click here to check out Cole’s website and more of his work.
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