Mammatus clouds have been snapped stealing the light away from the bright autumn colours and falling leaves.

Weatherzone meteorologist Guy Dixon said it is the season for the mammatus cloud.

"These cloud formations are most likely throughout the summer, early autumn months as low pressure troughs sweep over southeastern Australia producing thunderstorms" he said.

He described mammatus clouds as parcels of air that keep on rising. When they reach high into the atmosphere the droplets grow large and in some cases freeze into crystals.

These large droplets and ice crystals take more warmth to evaporate. As a result, they sink lower than the cloud base and form nodules known as mammatus clouds.

Richardson amateur photographer Kym Bradley has an interest in bird photography but she could not pass up the opportunity to get the camera out when she saw these clouds on Sunday.

Ms Bradley had to look twice - at first glance she had mistaken the bubbly cloud formation for Canberra's iconic Skywhale.

"I have never seen the cloud formation like that at all. It had me absolutely stumped and I thought I have got to get a shot of that," she said.

Fisher entrant Kevin Thornhill also captured the sunset through the clouds reflecting off Lake Burley Griffin.

Mr Thornhill, who walks around the lake almost every day taking pictures of Canberra's scenery, knew the cloud formations were too good to miss.

After taking the first shot he raced to the top of Mt Ainslie to capture a long exposure of the sunset from above.

"The photos were taken at two of the most amazing views in Canberra and due to the climate we only get cloud formations and colours like that a few times a year," he said.

Competition entrants' photos have the chance of being published in The Canberra Times newspaper or on canberratimes.com.au.

Send a maximum of three photos to photocomp@canberratimes.com.au as attached JPEG files and include your name, address, phone number, photo title, a description of the photo and the date it was taken.

Photos must be between 150 kilobytes and one megabyte. Winners will take home a share of the $1000 prize.