The 505
(Please clickity-click to see the empty garage larger than life with a nice, dark background) Feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything of the urbex variety on the site, especially now that storm season has arrived. Feels good to change the pace up and throw out an image from waaaay back in April that I kept forgetting about. This was the inside of an old, abandoned gas station up at Two Guns, Arizona. I friggin’ love old, lost gas stations along well-traveled highways. Anything left for dead like that is cool, but you have to wonder [...]
The Hills are Alive
Man. It’s been awhile since I’ve been that sick. Strange abdominal pain. 103 temp. Trip to the ER. Almost 10 days being completely away from the online world. And the whole time with the iPad on my lap re-watching Battlestar Galactica. God bless Netflix. Happy to report I got through all 76 episodes. And yes, it was awesome as always. Anyways, despite being sick, it was a nice break from everything. Cleared my head a bit, stopped thinking about what I’m usually obsessed about(photography) and just laid around, soaking up up some time off. Felt good. Also feels good to [...]
Irrigation
(Click to view with a black background AND so it fits your monitor, unless you have a giant one) What I love about stormchasing around Arizona is just the random places you find along the way. The farm fields you just happen to be hanging out by for an hour as you watch storms develop over the Catalina Mountains. I never really have plans on where I’m going, I just end up there. On this day I was with my buddy Ken Peterson and we pulled off to shoot some of the cool clouds, and ended up sitting around at [...]
The Tweezers
(Clickity click…to view on blackity black) So my daughter has been sick all week with a lovely stomach virus. Not napping well, not sleeping through the night, fevers…lots of good stuff. Apparently that transferred to me yesterday, and I was feeling darn lousy all day. I pretty much lounged around on the couch being a big baby. Wasn’t even thinking of going out after storms. In fact, the forecast called for NOTHING in the Phoenix area last night. No need to worry right? Suddenly storms just roll in from all over. I walk outside, look just north and it’s like [...]
Red Dawn
(click to view larger on a black border…just looks better) A break from all the lightning and storms…time for Movie Title Wednesday! One of those movies that I just have to watch if I see it on the TV on a Saturday afternoon is Red Dawn. Granted, I haven’t seen it on the TV much recently and probably have watched it through only a handful of times (the last time being a very long time ago), but it’s still such a fun movie. World War II, Russians attack, Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson…hiding out in the woods, a resistance, [...]
Timelapse: Monsoon storm rolls into Phoenix
A couple of days ago we had a fairly epic looking storm roll into Phoenix right at sunset. The clouds were just amazing. There was a dust storm. You can see lightning on the left horizon towards the end of this video. The setting sun creating beautiful red tones was awesome. I’ve been torn lately between photographing things like this and doing timelapes, because I really, REALLY love seeing cloud movement afterwards. One of my favorite things in the world are timelapes of storm and cloud motion. Something we just can’t see too well with the naked eye looks so [...]
Lightning on the 89A
(Click to see the image smaller so it fits your screen, or enjoy it on your huge stinking monitor!) At the start of the year, I had a sort of awakening. I had changed up the way I processed images and discovered the beauty of black and white. It was the work of Mitch Dobrowner that really spoke to me around that time and I vowed to myself that this storm season I’d use a lot less color in my storm photography. Even lightning. Suddenly it’s the middle of the stormchasing season and I hadn’t done a lick of lightning [...]
Sunsets and Strikes
(click on the images to view in lightbox) This season of stormchasing has been amazing so far. July is now in the books and yet the stuff I’ve seen already this summer has been just awesome. A lot of that has to do with just BEING out there more than last year, but I feel like there have just been some epic scenes that I’ve been lucky to witness. For example, last night I had planned to stay in town and just shoot lightning if it moved into Phoenix in the evening. Our daughter has been sick and Sunday was [...]
Fire ahead
Man I had a tough time last night. I had never been up to Lake Pleasant northwest of Phoenix, but that kind of where this storm was headed, so I thought it would be pretty awesome to capture the sunset glowing over a lake. But I didn’t know the area very well, so by the time the sunset was arriving, I was still trying to find out how to get down to the water. Plus the gas light started coming on intermittently, and with a 1994 4Runner, you aren’t going to have a ton of miles left to find a [...]
Old Man Sunset
(Click to watch the storm as God intended…larger, with a dark border) Scenes like these are the reason why I love chasing and photographing the monsoons here in Arizona. This was the day before the big haboob arrived in Phoenix. As you can see, dust storms in this state are a normal occurrence during the summer (just nothing so bad as the July 5th one). I was headed south from Phoenix and saw a big wall of dust headed our way, along with a pretty epic looking stormcell. On radar, it was actually headed perfectly towards town. So I had [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.