"I've looked at clouds from both sides now!"

As the old song suggests, the visual beauty of clouds may be appreciated from the top looking down as well as the more traditional bottom looking up. This post is in honor of John Day, a physicist who recently passed away, and spent his life studying clouds and promoting cloud watching. I feel certain he would have enjoyed flying, leaning out an open airplane window and taking photographs of clouds from the top to compliment the view from the ground.

I only just learned of Dr. Day and his work recently. He studied clouds, wrote about clouds and cloud physics, turned cloud photos into art and even got the US Postal service to put one of his cloud photos on a postage stamp.

Knowing this I am convinced I would have enjoyed talking to the man and I believe he would have enjoyed discussing and comparing images and stories about clouds. As a pilot, I've always watched clouds and whenever possible, taken photos from an airliner window as well as open cockpit and open window small planes. Clouds can be just as fascinating when viewed from the top looking down, as they can be from the bottom looking up!

The three photos here are my favorite cloud images recently shot. The orange mammatus cloud shapes were at Sunriver after a thunderstorm. The striation lines of clouds cast interesting shadows over the Bitterroot mountain range while flying east, and Mount Hood makes an early summer roadblock for a mid-level line of stratus, forced to curve around the shape of the mountain.

You can view Dr. Day's images and read more about him and his work on his website, at www.cloudman.com.

onwards and upwards,

Rob Bremmer