The Sky - photos and discussion
 

One of the strong recurring themes of sola is the sky. We are frequently treated to images of the sky, one character is constantly photographing the sky and sometimes characters discuss the sky. Much of sola is about the sky, so here is a place for those things.

This is a place to discuss the sky's beauty, it's moods, it's power over our hearts and souls. Or just a place to ask about the different types of cloud formations. Now, lets start the discussion with the off-topic post by Kaoru Chujo that inspired me to create this thread...

I figure this post is at least tangentially on-topic. This photo of the sky...

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2762/82611zt8.th.jpg

...was taken by Hirano Aya and posted to her blog yesterday. She wrote that the clouds breaking looked to her like a dragon leaping up and splitting open the sky. That's what it looks like to me, too. Click to enlarge.

I see a smoking-pipe. :p

Cheers.

No, not really, but I understand why you want to share it. :p

Regardless it looks to me like the Rolling Stones Logo.

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/1...gstonesen3.jpg

Yes....Dragon....hmmmmmmmm. :confused:

Lol. Both true. I still prefer the dragon (coiling vertically up the left-hand side). Thanks for at least having some fun with it. Sora!

This reminds me the pain of not having a digital camera myself.

check out these nice pics.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...ud.xlarge1.jpg

(when I get home I'll post some pics I've taken myself.... theyre pretty nice too =)

This thread is now about Aya Hirano-sama. :) j/k

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The use of the sky is one element of Sola that dragged me into the show. And the way it is presented in the first episode is great, where Matsuri continues to long to see the blue sky.

If you're looking for photos of the sky(or any photo for that matter) you can try,

http://www.sxc.hu/

(need registration to download, but they have some high res, high quality images)

We might turn into our own Yoritos is this goes on >.> .

"nice" is an understatement, amazing pictures (well, perhaps higher resolution), especially the first one. Setting (or rising?) sun, and colours from deep red to blue.

to bad the sky is clouded here today...
if the sky was clear I could have taken some really nice sunset pictures between the mountains, above the ocean.
I hope it will be clear tomorrow.

Not as beautiful as those shots posted by Areguzanda, but here are pics from three other current anime in which the sky is important:

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/1...rskybq5.th.jpg http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/1...askycc9.th.jpg http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/4113/gl1nv7.th.jpg

(l-r): 1. Darker than Black, where the sky has been replaced by aliens with an artifical sky in which each star is connected with one of their "contractors" on Earth. 2. Hitohira, where a boy tells a girl: "You can see the Milky Way much more clearly here in the country, maybe that's why you came here." 3. Gurren-Laggen, where the protagonists are hungry and look up at the clouds (this cap is from the notorious episode 4).

And thanks to solwyvern for that photo agency link.

It was the sky theme which attracted me to this series, as I too spend a lot of time photographing the sky. I agree totally with Yorito about it's ever-changing qualities: quite often I've seen a sky I want to photograph but by the time I've got my camera out and fitted the right lens to capture the particular composition the clouds have changed shape or the special quality of the light has gone. So I can sympathise with him rushing out to photograph it like he does.

OTOH since ep.1 I don't think they've done anything special with the sky, AIR was very much more beautiful in that respect, I often felt that the whole mood of AIR was determined by the ever-changing beautiful skies, which reach a climax in the final episode. (In fact when you check the Japanese name for the episode entitled "air", it is "sora", so really the two series AIR and Sola have the same name, but one translates it idiosyncratically, the other romanises it idiosyncratically.)

Another series which features a character who likes photographing the sky is Windy Tales, though in that case the sky photos look like collages of torn up white paper on blue backgrounds, very abstract and not at all evocative of the sentiments being expressed about it. (However I have to say the visual style of Windy Tales was one of the most original I've ever seen in an anime series.)

Went for a round of shooting this arvo when i remembered that there was the Sola 'The Sky' thread, so i few quick shots of the sky just to contribute

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/9...0003rb5.th.jpg
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/9...0002fp2.th.jpg


Enjoy!

^^
ps: for sum reason, the cloud looks like some sort of claw reaching over the building.....^^"

it finally cleared up enough for me to take som pictures.
though I think the clouds are coming back anytime now.

as you can see here:
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/5...0354px3.th.jpg

though its blowing quite a bit up there so maybe the clouds will go away...
at least these clouds are on the move :
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/4...0355xl0.th.jpg

I was looking for a little special cloud to take a picture of...and when I turned my head straight up one little cloud was floating all alone with huge space of blue area in all directions.
looked kind of peaceful:
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8...0351xj5.th.jpg

hopefully I get take some more shots tomorrow. :)

One of my favourite pictures from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day happens to be an excellent sky shot.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ima...man3_young.jpg

Explained at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020926.html with a larger version available if you click the image. The APOD Archive has thousands of beautiful pictures of space, the sky and related stuff. Though this one is definitely my favourite sky shot. I think of it whenever people bring up clouds, because this rocket trail is just so gorgeous, it's hard to believe it's real. ^^

Astronomy of the Day is an excellent site, I have checked it nearly everyday for years.

I've liked seeing the different "moods" of the sky (as I call it) long before I even saw any of these sky-related anime, although seeing them did cause me to take more pictures of it.

Probably my own favorite taken photo with the sky. I have a thing with powerlines too perhaps caused by some animes showing the lines silhouetted against the sky.
http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/621...sskyuq9.th.jpg


For photos not by me it would have to be this. Got it from years ago from a friend who had it as one of his favorite photos too.

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/7285/fireskykp9.th.jpg

Towering cumulonimbus clouds often seen in summer scenes in animes such as AIR, are used because they do in fact usually appear mostly in summer, when the temperatures on the ground are hot enough to caused updrafts to form them, and they are indeed towering. They can get over twice as tall as the tallest mountain, Everest.
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/430...rskyqu4.th.jpg

it's too clouded to take any good shoots today.
but I have a special treat for all of you.
this is the link to a online-webcam thats up 24/7
just use F5 to refresh the site (the first time you press the link it may lag..so press F5 at least a couple of times before it is really updated)
and you'll get minute updated pics from above the City of Molde, north/west in norway.

Online-webcam of Molde (see the weather here Now! ) =D

I spent the weekend watching my brother's soccer team. (He coaches, his son plays. They placed third because of a bad bounce on an overtime corner-kick.)

But with a camera in my hand and a clear, sunny day, I had a chance to engage in some soraphilia.

There was an antenna farm next to the fields, it reminded me of the stills from the ED.
http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/4...5261638.th.jpg

Took this picture with the sun at my back. Has a nice even field of blue.
http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/3...5261644.th.jpg

This cloud had just drifted in front of the sun. My favorite shot.
http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/9...5261652.th.jpg

Took this the next day. It's more similar to the pictures Yorito likes, just the sky with no obstructions from the ground. I tried using an adjustment layer with a gradient to even out the brightness.
http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/7...5271526.th.jpg

I've taken a lot of pictures of the sky with my camera as well, but I don't have many of them on this computer. I was so happy to get a 5.0MP camera like 2 years ago, and now I'm reading about 12MP doh :( Such is technology though :)