Mother Nature treated me to a wonderful light show for my birthday on this evening. It is exactly for this reason why I always keep my camera with me. I grabbed it and started shooting.

I've had this new Canon SX40 HS for about 2 months now and I'm starting to discover its potential, especially with the 35x optical zoom lens.

The setting sun behind the clouds made for some great lighting effects !

The wonderful 35x optical zoom lens allowed me to capture some good closeups.

As long as the camera has something in the frame on which to focus, like the trees, the backlit clouds turn out fine.

The backlit clouds look pretty cool.

But when I tried to zoom in on just the backlit clouds, the camera had trouble focusing.

This is why you see a lot of trees, buildings, etc. in the pictures.

As long as the camera has something on which to focus, the pics are ok.

I kept zooming in on the clouds with varying levels of success.

The backlit clouds made for a great effect.

I moved to an open area of our parking lot to take more pics of the developing clouds.

Wonderful backlighting !

As the clouds moved, the lighting pattern changed slightly.

I continued to zoom in as best as I could.

I kept snapping pics as the clouds moved.

I tried to zoom in on one of the cloud tips. With a tree in the frame, the picture came out ok.

Trying to zoom in further became problematic.

The camera couldn't focus on anything which made the picture somewhat blurry.

When I backed off the zoom for a broader shot, it looked as if I was seeing a face in the clouds looking down.

Maybe it's me. But I can definitely see a face in the photos above and below.

Perhaps this was the Universe giving me a sign that life is good.

Either that, or this is the owner of the vehicle I was currently working on, and he was making sure I was doing my job properly.

The clouds continued to move and the face started to disappear.

I marveled at it for a few more minutes.

Eventually, the face blended into the surrounding clouds.

After a few more minutes, all traces of the face were gone.