Take, for example, this photo at Canada Place. The clouds are pretty threatening, but provide a contrasting backdrop to the brightness of the sails to the west and the cranes to the east.

View Large On Black

I took this photo below in the bridge walkway between Waterfront Skytrain Station and the Seabus terminal (you can see some reflections in the left side of the photo). It’s also the terminus station for the West Coast Express commuter train, which you can see in the far right of the photo. With the sun reaching under the clouds and bouncing off the colourful train cars, the layers of clouds give a sense of depth and softness behind all the linear patterns of trains, tracks, and buildings.

My last example of how rain clouds can be underappreciated in photos is this one taken by my cameraphone while I was driving over the Alex Fraser Bridge into Delta on Wednesday. Most of the time my cameraphone takes horribly blurry, grainy pictures with blown-out highlights and weird colour casts. Well, what do you know — with medium light, monochromatic grays, and a compelling subject it really didn’t do badly at all. This is probably the best picture I’ve ever seen come out of my Samsung U510.