Observations of nature
"Follow Nature, not another artist!"
Advice by artist Eupompos of Sikyon to a young Lysippos, future portraitist of Alexander the Great.
The variety of natural wonders available to us are not all distant, some appear and reappear over our heads and are never noticed by a population used to being indoors. The skies are a constant source of inspiration to me, whenever the weather changes I try to keep track of clouds worth capturing. Clouds, the skies, and the infinitely variable combinations of light and color assure a lifetime of rewarding sights to those who make the effort. I carry a still camera whenever I might capture dramatic clouds, sunsets, and sunrises. In a magical few minutes the lighting can be dramatic, quickly fading but captured forever by film and in recent years digital cameras.
Three books come to mind as worth reading to get an idea of the range of possibilities available to naked eye sky watchers, the classic which I discovered at the USGS library 'The Nature Of Light And Colour In The Open Air' by M. Minnaert, (Dover, 1954) 'Sunsets. Twilights, and Evening Skies' by Aden and Marjory Meinel, (Cambridge University Press 1983) and more recently 'Color, Light, in Nature' by David K. Lynch and William Livingston.(Cambridge University Press 1995)