Conventional wisdom is to take the shot in both landscape and portrait formats. Although you can crop one to the other, framing each individually maximizes your opportunities and choices. So, after capturing the shots I posted yesterday, I turned my Canon S100 (B&H) vertically and framed a this shot. By the EXIF data, this series of shots was taken one minute and fifty one seconds later. The cruising speed of a Boeing 737 is a shade over 500 miles per hour (all things being equal) so we’d traveled about eight miles closer to the cloud wall. Add to that the cloud wall was moving west, towards us and that yields the change in the cloud shapes between the two photo-sets. This set has also picked up more yellow from the setting sun. Also, this composition shows the approaching night sky in the way the to left corner is almost black. Again, I like to play with black and white conversions and I’ve provided a black and white version below.
by Richard Davis
[...] see the great views to the front through the windshield! On this particular day, while I could see thunder clouds to our south, apparently the pilots of UA1142 saw a break in the clouds as our transition through the cloud wall [...]