skies | greshoff – notebook of an architectural and portrait photographer

I’d been planning to do a review of 2013 but I’ve been sidetracked by the interesting weather we’ve had of late.

in the early eighties when I was a student of photography (I say “was” – I still regard myself as a student of photography!) I did a series of landscapes which were dominated by sky. Indeed they were the most popular images at both my student exhibitions and they sold quite well too as far as I recall. The last two images below are from that series. By the way, these was scanned from original prints made on DW Agfa Portriga-Rapid 118 paper – a wonderful chloro-bromide paper with added cadmium giving uniquely warm, rich tones – now (sadly) long, long discontinued.

Without wishing to invoke any hackneyed phrases, South Africa is a land of contrasts and the same is true of the skies, they can be fabulous festivals of light and colour but still the skies over England have something on those over Africa.

In a curious way I have always found the infinite tonal variations in the clouds and skies here both confining and liberating and the endless range of changing shapes, sizes and particularly the subtlety of tones never cease to amaze me. It can make even the most oppressive cold winters day into something of wonder.

Here then, are some English clouds with a couple of 32 year old Eastern Cape, South African ones thrown in at the end for good measure.