The telephoto, in this case 600mm, is not your typical lens for a landscape. With not clean white and barely a touch of black, it’s not your typical successful black and white. What provides the foundation of possible photographic success is all the layers, all the shades of gray. These help the mind’s eye travel through the photograph, each time a little more appears, and more shades of gray appear. It’s then that the clouds in the middle of the frame break up the layers, and the surprise intrigues the traveler. All that wraps up the image into a simple click, the camera doing all the lifting. It’s the power of the layers of shades of gray.

I’m a sucker for great clouds, and this afternoon, the thunderhead was performing! It grew and grew, and for the Z 6III’s Dark Monotone, it was a simple click. But the rest, well, just wasn’t working. I walked almost a half mile trying to find a foreground to go with the ok middle ground and killer sky. But nothin. The foreground you see isn’t very nice, had to use the Yellow slide in B&W mode in ACR to make somethin happen there. Hate when the heart and camera don’t get together, just couldn’t swing it!

The Missoula Valley runs basically east and west. The Bitteroot Valley runs basically north and south. One carved by the Clark Fork and the other by the Bitterroot. Where the two rivers meet creates a perfect T of the two valleys. Looking south from runway 29, you can see the Bitteroot Valley fade in the distance, and the pending storm fills the void beautifully. This is a simple click using Monochrome to dramatize the stacking of the clouds and the downhill slope. I enjoyed the meeting at the T.

What a glorious day! The annual Museum of Mountain Flying: Flying and Fishing Summer Camp is underway, with day two on the river. Day one was in the classroom, tying flies. Day three is building a plane, learning to rivot and the such. Day four is up in the skies being taken on flights around the Missoula Valley. Well, today was on the river, and it was a hoot! Twenty kids with fly rods learning the fine art of casting and waiting. Every so often, we’d hear a rumble behind us, and by 10:30, well, you see how the bluebird blue skies change. By 13:00, the show was on, and the rain fell. It was an amazing day with the kids, lots of fun with Blackfoot Thunder.