Rosa looked over her shoulder. There was no one here but the feeling that someone was following her was palpable. The man who had watched her so intently at the vegetable stall was gone but the metal taste in her mouth that he seemed to inspire was still there. The wind whipped at her skirt and turned to start walking. There was nothing to be done right now but as she turned the corner into the alley her mind again began to whip through the possibilities and the problems, right now there was too much, right now…
Just before and just after a large storm are often great times to get very dramatic sky’s. In this image the rain part of the storm had passed and the sky seemed to be pressing down on me. To emphasize this feeling of compression I got low on the ground with a very wide angle lens and waited for the water to approach. The advancing and retreating waves had made the sand very smooth and I wanted the water to produce a line (1) that would echo the line of clouds (2) near the horizon. I did not notice it when I snapped the picture but the bird (3) in the really dark clouds at right helps to balance the visual weight of the island (4) on the left. Sometimes your most important decisions, photographically speaking, happen when you are at the computer, deciding what to keep and what let go.
For some other images of dramatic storm skys check here and here.
-Russell Berg