(please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 17-40 f/4 l, 17mm, iso 100, f/22, 0.6sec // buy print)

No, a bunch of Cholla cactus grouped together isn’t called a gaggle. But I always liked that word and felt like using it today. Sure, it usually refers to a flock of geese that are actually not flying, but according to Dictionary.com, it can also mean an assortment of related things.

Feeling like that was a bunch of useless information and curious why I decided to share that with you?

Me too.

We’ve had an incredibly busy, stressful and amazing week. So much has happened with our pending adoption that we haven’t had much time to think, let alone rest much.

So when I saw the rainy clouds rolling into Phoenix yesterday afternoon, it felt like a perfect opportunity to take  a break, throw Lyla in the truck and go for a drive. The clouds weren’t actually dropping rain, but there was “virga” hanging off the bottoms, and I knew when the sun went down, all that virga would just get lit up like a Christmas tree.

Cholla cactus are notorious for capturing light in their needles. It’s one of the more beautiful things about the desert. And one of the most ironic. When they aren’t looking all gorgeous with light, those needles can bore themselves through your shoes, your jeans, your clothes and embed themselves right in your skin. And also they are quite painful.

But when they look like this…you just think…”awwww, they are so cute.”

Anyways. This image is pretty tall on the blog, so clicking on it will make it fit to your screen. Also looks a bit better!

Happy Friday everyone.

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(please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 17-40 f/4 l, 17mm, f/16, iso 100, 1/4 sec // buy print)

The weather predictions for winter out here in Arizona called for a La Nina pattern…meaning not much rain and not very cold temperatures. So it was kind of a surprise when December rolled in with quite a few cold fronts that dropped snow on the mountains outside of Phoenix and also an inch of rain in town.

Now, of course, we’re well into our predicted La Nina winter, with temps hovering around 75-80 and no rain in sight. Which makes me sad, but at least I have December to look fondly on.

I took this photograph back on the 22nd along one of my favorite stretches of road in all of Arizona, and it’s only about 30 minutes from my house. If you’ve followed me for awhile, you’ve probably seen a few past images from this spot. This was probably my third night out in a row trying to capture a sunset over the mountains east of Phoenix, but nothing was panning out. My buddies Chris Frailey and Bryan Snider were out there those days as well and all of us were pondering the whereabouts of Arizona’s epic sunsets.

Finally this evening paid off. I was worried though…the clouds stretching from the mountains ahead were actually on the left side of the road about 15 minutes earlier. I was praying they wouldn’t move too far right before the color of the setting sun hit them.

This was also the first time out with the new (used) Canon 17-40 L. Love the lens, can’t wait to play with it a bit more.

(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 70-200 2.8 is l, 185mm, f/11, iso 100, 30 sec)

One of my favorite roads in Arizona is the Beeline Highway. It takes you through some of the most beautiful areas of Arizona. You can see the Superstition mountains, the Four Peaks, Sycamore Creek and all kinds of other things. It allows you to travel from Phoenix to Payson, where the beauty and cool temps of the Mogollon Rim are only 90 minutes from the hot desert.

I’ve always loved this curve in the highway, but never figure out how to shoot it until last night. Our sunset shoot out at the Four Peaks was a bust because of the rain and low clouds, but the west horizon was beautiful and I pulled out the 70-200 to grab some silhouette shots of cactus against the sky.

As I turned to leave, I noticed a lot more cars traveling along the Beeline than you usually see. I figured a bunch must be coming home from Roosevelt Lake or seeing the snow up north. Already having the 70-200 on there made me realize I could get a sweet, compressed shot of this bend in the highway and the light trails of all the vehicles.

I urge you to click to view it full-sized on black, I think WordPress darkened the image up a bit when it re-sized it down to 960.

(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 17mm, iso 100, f/20, 1/5 // buy print)

Yesterday afternoon I had a  conference call that was scheduled to run to 5:30. I was praying it got over early, because the snow on the Four Peaks was amazing and I knew I had to get out there again for sunset.

As luck would have it, the call ended at 4pm and I was bolting for the door. Camera gear, Lyla…her stuff, her DVD player…all of it. We both flew up the Beeline Highway to meet up with my fellow photogs Chris Frailey and Bryan Snider (see Bryan’s pics from last night right here!). I ran into them on Four Peaks Road, but as we usually try to do when we meet up…we went our own ways so that we all don’t end up with the same images.

I had a feeling these low hanging clouds would just ignite with color when the light hit them right, and sure enough…it was one of those absolutely stunning Arizona sunsets. I was in the truck looking for a great spot when I saw this majestic Saguaro still being hit with light atop this hill. You can even see the spikey yucca on the right getting a bit of light too as the sun was almost level with the hill I was standing on.

And if you can’t immediately see them, the Four Peaks sit on the right horizon, covered in clouds and snow.

I love this area of Arizona and I never get sick of the snowy Peaks. I could shoot them everyday.

But it also left little time for me to get out of the house to shoot other things. And I missed that. So on Monday when there were reports of snow on the outlying deserts, I packed up the car, including my daughter, and made a beeline for…well, the Beeline Highway. And the Four Peaks area.

The sky was magnificent of course, the Peaks had snow, the desert was gorgeous and the air was a chilly 40 degrees. It was awesome to just be out in nature again after the six week hiatus.

So here are some shots from the evening. You will likely notice a different feel to these. Recently for my portrait/wedding work, I’ve switched my processing over to a toolset called VSCO Film. I used a few of their presets and combined them with my own tweaks to come up with something I just love. It’s been fantastic for all the photoshoots, I absolutely dig how my images are looking these days.

But I wanted to try that same kind of film style on these desert images. And I love it. Truly. It’s actually created a debate in my head on how I want to do this kind of thing going forward.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy them. I used three lenses for these shots below…the Tammy 17-35 2.8, Canon 35 1.4 and Canon 70-200 2.8.

(click to view these on black if you want, and roll through the slideshow)

The next two were taken using the 35mm 1.4 wide open…and I friggin’ love the subtle depth of field.

Had to include this shot of my daughter…bundled up, playing A-Breaker on the iPhone!

(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 70-200 2.8 is l, 115mm, f/14, iso 100, 0.5 sec // buy print)

It’s been awhile since I posted a landscape or weather photo on the blog, and even longer since I’ve actually been out shooting that stuff.

But an early winter storm woke me up a bit and the reports of snow on the outlying areas of town Monday morning kicked me into gear. I picked up Lyla from the sitter just after 3pm and we made our way towards Horseshoe Lake, where I had seen snow earlier on the news. But it seemed to have mostly melted by the time we made it up to Scottsdale. At the same time, I could see the Four Peaks standing mightily, covered in snow…so we braved rush hour traffic to get all the way to the Beeline Highway.

There were some incredible clouds around before sunset, but sadly they moved off too quickly for me to get into this composition. But we were still left with those gorgeous peaks, a nice dusting of snow and of course, those stoic saguaro cacti.

I’m vowing to drive up to the top of those peaks the next time we get a good winter storm. Never been there, but I’ve heard it’s awesome.

Today is Movie Title Wednesday and I’ve never used the same move twice in over a year doing this series. So I probably should have saved this film for next spring when I hit the road out in the Midwest and see my first tornado, but by then none of you will even remember this anyways. So I went with it today!

First off, Twister was pure awesome for weather and storm chasing nuts. Sure, it romanticized, glamorized and added all of those hollywood elements to the science of storm chasing. I know those hard core chasers who had been doing it for years probably didn’t like this movie. And maybe it wasn’t the best, but I certainly enjoyed it and whenever it’s on, I have to watch it. Not only that, but the idea they have at the end to let the probes float up into the tornado…that was way ahead of its time because just last year a vehicle started doing sort of the same thing for the first time. Pretty awesome.

Yesterday we had some dynamic weather in Arizona. There was a lot of crazy winds and instability going on, so there were severe warnings quite a few times throughout the day. My daughter and I left the house late in the afternoon and drove towards South Mountain. We spotted this little cell that had some interesting characteristics to it. You could see a sort of “spiral” shape to it as it rose into the sky.

The first picture above shows that. You can see it twisting skyward. I’d suggest clicking on each to view on black and also so it fits your screen!

This is indicative of a storm that has some rotation on it. And rotation is the first step to a mesocyclone, which CAN lead to a tornado. But that mainly happens in the Midwest, not out here very much. Still…seeing anything like this in Arizona is always a treat.

The last image below is just another shot of the cell a few minutes later. You can kind of see some spinny-ness going on, but it started dying out right when I got to it. Was kind of spooky to be right under this for a bit, but I was about 95% confident nothing would happen.

Gonna be quiet on the blog the rest of the week as I travel to New York City with the wife to get away from the hot temps of Phoenix. Of course, it’s 62 this morning and is going to be in the high 70′s tomorrow, so I guess we left just in time!

Have a great week everyone.

(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, 50mm 1.4, f/5.6, iso 100, 30 sec // buy print)

It’s Movie Title Wednesday here on the bloggity blog blog, and this week we have a remake of an old classic, which was an adaption from one of my favorite books of all-time.

War of the Worlds. The recent remake version starred Tom Cruise and was just okay for me. I love those kind of sci-fi, end of the world type disaster films, but they just didn’t do a very good job with it. The original version (at least, I think there are only two, I’m not doing any research here…there might be hundreds, who knows) was considered the “classic”, but all I remember is being disappointed at how different it was from the book.

Now…the actual book was brilliant. Written by H.G. Wells, I read it in high school and I was so sucked into the story, I remember looking over my shoulder a few times while I read it in my bedroom. If you’ve never read the book, then ignore both movies I mention above and go pick up a copy. In fact, I may read it again.

So why did I choose this movie anyways? Well…the lightning above….it reminded me of the Tom Cruise version with the tall, slim robotic tripod alien beings walking over the cities destroying everything around them. In fact, I don’t know how you look at the image above and don’t at least get some impression of a giant, spindly creature towering over Chandler, Arizona. Kind of creeps me out actually.

I have to give some credit for the title of this image to my friend Scott Wood. Not the title itself, but the idea of finding “things” in lightning. Sort of like looking at puffy clouds and seeing a dog, or a car, or whatever. Scott posted an image called “The Skater” and it made me realize how much fun it is to look for familiar things in a lightning strike. It’s definitely not always easy.

But this one was a no-brainer.

(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 35mm 1.4, f/5.6, iso 100, 30 sec // buy print)

My favorite band in all the world is Snow Patrol. I’ve loved them for years now. Most of the time when I like a band, I end up being bored with them after listening to their CD for awhile. Not so with this group. They’ve never, ever gotten old to me. I was finally able to see them in concert a few years back and wish they’d return to Arizona soon.

The reason I bring them up is because the title of this image is a take-off of their album, “A Hundred Million Suns“, which came out in 2008. I always though that title was so interesting and when I saw the image of this lightning strike on the back of my camera, it only took me a second to know what I’d dub it on the blog.

This strike is kind of unique in the amount of tendrils or fingers that are exploding all over the place. It was an intense bit of electrical release.

And stuff like this isn’t always visible to the naked eye. It’s so quick, so bright, you can miss most of what a camera picks up. Especially if you aren’t already looking in the right spot.

Which is why I love shooting it!

Friday afternoon and Saturday were some pretty eventful storm days for southeastern Arizona. I was down there both days chasing storms, lightning…etc…but something I wasn’t really thinking about were flash floods.

The deserts are usually very, very dry, so when you get a massive downpour of rain, it doesn’t seep into the earth. It just runs downhill. And if you have mountains and hills nearby, it all adds up to quickly form flash floods.

In the first two clips of flooding, the storm that dumped the rain was severe warned and even had rotation on it…which I kind of captured in this other video. We wanted to chase it, so we got off on Red Rock Road, only to find these low points in the road completely covered in rushing water. I am pretty sure my Vera could have made it…but with all the emergency vehicles that crossed the water after we stopped…it seemed like it could have been worse further up. Plus I didn’t want to get stuck with Lyla in the back!

The third clip in the video was from Saturday and was again the sight of a wash after a severe/tornado warned storm went through the area.

Also…enjoy some pictures of my little girl from Friday’s chase. She’s my little buddy, my stormchasing co-pilot and she’s also becoming very adept at spotting lightning. That’s all a father can ask for really.