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.