The Air Up There

I've always been fascinated by clouds. I think my interest was sparked as a little girl, learning for the first time the proper names of all the various cloud types. Cumulonimbus. Cirrus. Stratus....  I would lay on the grass and stare at the clouds, watching them glide by on a windy day or change shape, once one type of cloud and then another.

I've long had a similar affection for flying. The strapped in my seat, inside a closed decompressed cabin type of flying.

So when I stumbled upon these cloud photographs by German photographer Rüdiger Nehmzow on Joanna Goddard's blog, I was just as smitten with his subjects as the audacity of  his method. Thousands of feet off the ground, tethered to the inside of the plane, leaning through doors wide open, while sucking life necessitating oxygen from a breathing mask. All so he could give us cloud admirers another perspective. 

It's another world entirely- similar to the world that exists below sea level, no? There is even a video showing how he captured these images on his website. Go here to see this daredevil in action.