It was the afternoon of October 28, 2010. I was traveling with friends and colleagues from the medieval town of San Gimigniano back to Firenze (Florence) for the evening. Along the way, my hosts were eager to show me another old town, Monteriggioni. As we neared our destination, I watched an immense thunderhead building over the far horizon. I started to make really interested noises and they offered to stop, but I urged them to continue, even though I saw it reach its full maturity and start to dissipate, waiting for a suitable foreground before I made my photo. By the time I found it, the cloud was past its best, but still very impressive, and here is the result of my patience.
krikitarts 
Impressive! Such a lovely shot.
Thanks, Lemony, some things are really worth waiting for!
awesome shot!
Thanks a lot, Mimo, I was afraid it would be nearly gone, but most of it waited for me to find the right perspective.
Beautiful!
Wish I could have shown it to you as it was ten minutes earlier in its life. But only the cloud itself woiuld have been of interest. I knew that if I waited long enough, something appropriate would appear to help me to enhance its waning magnificence.
It’s magnificence still comes through. And it’s wonderful how it rises above the buildings, giving them importance also. Sometimes we must go in search of all elements to make a photo really stand out. I’m learning that.
One of the best bits of advice I’ve seen through the years is to strive to eliminate from the visible image anything that not only detracts from or distracts the viewer from the essential elements, but also anything that doesn’t add interest. Conversely, one should try to include, as much as possible, only elements that actually add to the main focus of interest. I’ve seen a number of photo offerings (not yours, of course), in which a small amount of creative cropping could greatly enhance the overall effectiveness of the images. Not infrequently, I find that the important elements in a photo I’ve made are presented to greater advantage and interest when I’ve cropped, say, a landscape-format image into a square or portrait format, after carefully and critically studying what’s available on the palette. This usually doesn’t take long at all, but there are times when I’ve gone back to an older negative, a slide, or a digital image and completely changed its effect, with only a few adjustments to the format and size of the window through which we view it.