Fiery alto­stra­tus sunset

This after­noon I went out for a walk at the Cook­ing Lake-Blackfoot Provin­cial Recre­ation Area. I spent sev­eral hours hap­pily walk­ing the Lost Lake/Islet Lake trails in unsea­son­ably warm weather, but with a flat, grey layer of drab alto­stra­tus cloud over­head. That is to say, there weren’t many good pho­to­graphic oppor­tu­ni­ties. As I was dri­ving home, how­ever, the sun snuck through a gap in the cloud just above the hori­zon – with stun­ning effect. I had to pull over to watch the – all too brief – colours spread across nearly the whole sky, and of course, take some pho­tographs. I find this type of sky can be very hard to get a good expo­sure, where it’s not too dark but the high­lights (espe­cially the yel­lows) aren’t blown out or over-saturated, leav­ing detail-less areas within the wispy strands of cloud. I think this one turned out quite well, and I really like how the pat­tern of the cloud could be eas­ily mis­taken for fire, which is just what the sky looked like for a few min­utes – aflame. I hope you enjoy it too.