‘Stormchasing Arizona’
The book is no longer available for pre-order, however you can still buy it at its current rate. Please click here for the dedicated page for Stormchasing Arizona. My faithful friends and fellow photographers out there know I’ve been working on a photobook for a few months now. Ever since the monsoons ended back in late September, I’ve been putting this thing together. My goal this year was to chase the Arizona monsoons as often as I could, try to capture it in as many ways as I possible, and then publish a photo journal filled with all my favorite [...]
Storms on Interstate 8
Ah…the first week in October will go down in my very own history books as the most awesome weather event of 2010. Storm after storm, organized systems, training…cloud structures I don’t get to see much out here…just fantastic fun. This is one of the first images I captured from that week. Around mid-day I noticed a storm building up down on the Arizona-Mexico border that was moving north. About an hour later it hadn’t died out at all, it just kept moving towards Interstate 8. You don’t see that much out here…usually storms build, die and the outflows created by [...]
Brain Lightning
I love weather, I love chasing storms and I absolutely LOVE the challenge of photographing lightning. There is definitely a love/hate relationship when it comes to lightning for me and I’m sure most other photogs out there doing the same thing. You drive far and fast to get in a spot to get some shots off, and then the storm dies. Or the lightning is enveloped in clouds and just doesn’t hit the ground anywhere that you can see. It can be one of the most frustrating hobbies out there, but also fulfilling and intensely exciting. These shots are not [...]
Urban Stormchasing
So with my sudden move to the downtown Phoenix area, I vowed to at least ATTEMPT to capture some storms from the cement jungle down here. For a guy like me who never has his 17-35mm lens on anything BUT 17mm…it’s a struggle to find wide open spaces to really give an idea of what a storm is doing. Time to get creative…and prove to myself that I can be a photographer in any setting. I shot this last week during the rash of severe weather we had (It’s now up to EIGHT confirmed tornadoes in northern Arizona). The location [...]
Ocotillo Wall Cloud
This is the second image in what will end up being many, many photos from the recent severe weather in Arizona. These storms were much more Midwest-like than anything we’re used to, especially up in northern Arizona where they now have confirmed six tornadoes touched down in a matter of 12 hours. The title of this photo calls that low hanging, dark area a wall cloud. I don’t necessarily remember seeing a ton of rotation in the thing, but then again, I had my lightning trigger out and was focused on trying to capture that stuff. I was barely paying [...]
One Man’s Trash…
…is another man’s treasure. I’ve been holding onto this one for awhile…shot it back in August along with a few other sunsets I’ve posted since then. This was one of my favorite photos from the day and sometimes you just want to HOLD onto a photo and just wait for the right time to post it. I have no idea why this was the time, or exactly why I waited…but regardless, here it is. This was just south of the I-10/SR 587 interchange…a road I had never been down before. I drove right on past this to grab the sunset, [...]
Monsoons and Barbed Wire
I’ve been holding onto this one since late July for some reason. I just wasn’t sure about it. I actually have a version of it without the barbed wire, but for some reason I kind of like this a little better. You get a sense of what is happening in the background anyways, the cactus, the vegetation and the monsoon storms brewing in the background. I had taken the original photo, was about to walk away and realized I liked the rusty old barbed wire and wanted to see what I could do with it. This is an HDR from [...]
Last Gasp
The title of this photo has a couple of meanings. The first being the fact that a little storm system which moved through Arizona the last two days could end up being the final bit of weather we get from the monsoon season (it officially ends on Sep. 30th). Despite all the stormy clouds during the day, my week has been quite busy and this was the only shot I ended up with. So in another way, this is likely my last monsoon photo until next year. Of course, there is always that slight chance something could pop up before [...]
Desert Cornfields
One of the stranger things you see when you roam the Arizona desert is the occasional summer cornfield. You just don’t EXPECT a dry, arid climate to be a place you’d want to grow corn…but of course, that’s why I’m not a farmer and mostly keep cool inside my air conditioned house. Back towards the end of August, we had a few days with fast-moving, severe storms blow through the state and this is a capture of one of them. These are the San Tan Mountains, a subject in many of my photographs. On the right horizon you can already [...]
Another sunset on the Gila River Indian Reservation
Now that we’re moving to downtown Phoenix, I’m really going to miss being close to places like this that are just a quick jaunt from where I currently reside. The Gila River Indian Reservation has been kind of my stomping ground this past summer for a lot of my storm chasing adventures. Once I move, getting to a spot like this will take about 30 minutes longer. Still, I can’t wait to see what is in store for me downtown and the surrounding areas. I know for certain that South Mountain has some hidden treasures to offer and I’ll be [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.