Amazing picture. Truly.

The sky looks like it is on fire.

I find black and white so difficult to do on a daily basis (and that is the motivation for this b&w photoblog). But looking up at this scene yesterday, I thought this one just called out for b&w. In fact, it's the first shot I've ever taken that works better in b&w than it does in color, and is probably the first b&w of my own that I actually really like.

Did you use a polarizing lens, or is that just how it looks straight to b&w?

My cousin took a photo in Arizona with some "little puffy clouds" with a polarizing filter. Even in color, it was one of the few photos from that trip that did justice to how awesome it looked in person. The contrast between the sky and clouds is vivid and amazing.

Nope, no polarizing lens. That's actually just the conversion from color to b&w (using the red channel). I wanted to play with it more in Photoshop, but everything I did to it looked especially fake and touched up, so I just left the picture as it was.