Yes, another series of posts reminding readers to — if they are so inclined — vote. In this case, vote for one of the Christmas Short Story Challenge submissions. The poll is at the end of that post and we hope to surpass the ten total votes we had for the previous challenge.

OK, on to clouds in the sky . . . some might remember THIS post where I showed a few photos I snapped as I watched interesting cloud formations pass over me. That post was my first foray into the Luminar 3 software. I’ve since upgraded to Luminar 4 . . . but that’s not what I used for the photos below.

Nothing against Luminar 4; I just felt like playing with DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection. Well, one thing . . . Luminar 4 loads really slow and then, when working with it, one isn’t sure if it’s doing something or if it went to sleep. I like the output from the program but it needs to address some bugs, preferably sooner rather than later.

Anyway, the following images are a combination of DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection processing with the occasional tweak in Lightroom.

There’s no SmugMug or Flickr Gallery for these since the details aren’t all that important. Oh, wait; I’m trying to promote Flickr so yes, there is a Flickr album HERE with these photos in it and I’ll add to it as I post more photos. Edited to Add: However, they are the same size as the ones seen here.

As I had mentioned at the time, these clouds came up fairly quickly. I mean, there wasn’t a gale and the shapes above me swirled at a leisurely but steady pace.

Still, it was fast enough that it looked as if we were going to be in for a blow.

For the record, nothing came of it; this was a front passing through the area (the temperature dropped) and soon the interesting shapes gave way to “regular” clouds, but no rain touched the ground anywhere near us.

I did get to play with multiple lenses, so that was good.

There’s a strange thing that happens when you see something unusual; it focuses your attention by evoking some primitive portion of your brain.

What do I mean by that? Well, we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to things much bigger than we are. The weather is one such thing. I mean, we check the weather for changes in temperature, humidity, and forecast of rain, but, as a rule, we don’t focus on it.

. . . until something unusual happens; a sudden stiff breeze, a drop in temperature, the sky turning to an ominous green tint.

In those times, we are reminded how small and vulnerable we are to forces that can level forests, tear apart structures, and kill us with a terrible effortlessness that’s difficult to comprehend.

Luckily, in this case, it was just visually interesting.

As is this from earlier this decade.

Here’s the gallery of the above:

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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