Photo: Jean Auger
Swirling, sun-kissed clouds make for a serene, award-winning photo.
Jean Auger considers herself a “photographer for fun.” She regularly gets up before the sunrise each morning to check if there are any photo-worthy sights. And nature photos are her expertise.
“You get this compulsion, you have to see what’s going on,” Auger says. “It gets you out of bed.”
Auger’s photo titled, “Circling the Sailboat,” was taken this last July, as she was out in her kayak on White Bear Lake. Her camera? An iPhone 11. She finds that with the new iPhone’s camera quality, there’s no need for any more complex gadgets.
“In the summer you have to get up pretty early,” Auger says. “If I see something that’s pretty interesting and there are good clouds, I’ll hop in my kayak.”
As she waited in her kayak, the clouds began swirling and changing to bright colors overhead. At first, she was directing her photographer’s eye at the multiple sailboats on the lake, but then saw the focal aspect to be the clouds.
“I didn’t like the way the clouds kept moving because they’re not static,” Auger says. She found the hardest part of capturing the photo to be the rapid movement of the clouds, yet wouldn’t have framed the photo she did without their spiraling motion.
Auger typically posts one photo a day on social media—mostly on Facebook where she posts photos from her outdoor adventures.
“That’s my little gift to the world,” Auger says. “How I can make the world a little bit better maybe for somebody by taking their mind off something else.”
