The Other Side of Clouds

“You’re sailing softly through the sun,
in a broken stone age dawn,
You fly so high,
I get a strange magic…”
-Strange Magic, ELO

I was recently given a rare and fortunate treat. Coming down off a vacation high, bright late afternoon skies, and a nearly empty flight meant that I was able to get images of the other side of clouds.

It’s lovely to simply lay around watch the clouds drift from below, and I can just as easily drift off and stare into the dreamy surreal world at 25,000 feet. I’ve been on dozens of flights, but somehow I’ve never had the luxury of space in which to move around and take pictures (or was so caught up in the excitement of my destination that everything else was background noise). So, while not really a new sight, it was still an entirely novel experience; something like gazing out to sea, something like a real-life Bespin, cinematically unreal and moody. As I moved from the afternoon in the tropics up the Atlantic coast and into evening, I got a long look at the ever-changing play of air, water, and light. To be sure, it’s pretty, and you could simply write it off as ARAT-type imagery (see my old post on ARAT), but that doesn’t mean it’s not an amazing sight…

Finally, something I had never seen before… a full rainbow; a complete ring unimpeded by land. This image doesn’t do it justice, but I had to include it. Wow.