I took a photo yesterday. I want to ask if I'm really seeing something or if it's an artifact of my cellphone's camera, but I don't want to use it as part of my project.. How do I post a photo in the discussions?
I'll try to describe it, in case it was really there and any "old hands" are familiar with the phenomena. There's a fluffy white cloud. On the photo, appears to be a sharp edged "shadow" on the sky between two edges of the cloud that kind of make a 'U'. Would there really be a sharply delineated darker area of sky? I've never noticed that before, but I've never spent so much time watching the sky, either! I didn't see it when I took the photo, but I often miss details until I look at the photos.
I went inside after I saw the clouds, and got my Konica Minolta D40 and took other photos of the clouds, and none of them have the "shadow." But the light had changed, of course.
It was about 4 pm The sun was at about 1 o'clock to 'my" cloud, and the edges of the cloud were very bright while the inside of it was more grey.
It's easiest to upload it to your project with a really old date (2008 or so). Otherwise you'll have to upload it somewhere else on the web. You can always delete it from your project later...
Given the time of day (close to sunset) and the appearance of it, I'd guess it was probably a cloud shadow caused by the cloud blocking the crepuscular rays, which were making the rest of the sky appear brighter. Some more dramatic examples:
No problem. If you process it to really heavily separate mid-tones, you can see that there's quite a lot of other, fainter dark and light rays being cast by the clouds:
(I'm not recommending this as a processing technique, merely as a way to emphasise this phenomenon!)
Wow! Thanks again. Yes, I understand, good science doesn't always make a good image - it REALLY doesn't look real now! But it's fascinating to know all that was going on, and I looked right at it and didn't see any of it until I looked at the photo and saw the one dark area. I really appreciate all your help with this! And that IS what the cloud looked like, which is why I took the photo in the first place, and thought I hadn't captured it.
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Given the time of day (close to sunset) and the appearance of it, I'd guess it was probably a cloud shadow caused by the cloud blocking the crepuscular rays, which were making the rest of the sky appear brighter. Some more dramatic examples:
http://www.demark.org/essays/CrepuscularRays.html
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/atoptics/rayim13.htm
Those are great links - thank you!
(I'm not recommending this as a processing technique, merely as a way to emphasise this phenomenon!)