The rainy desert
I love black and white photography. Earlier this year I made a promise to myself that I would endeavor to do a lot more B&W this summer during stormchasing. What’s kind of happened is that I’m really enjoying colors. I’ll try it without any color and will usually end up going back. This one, however, I really liked with some harsh black and white processing. Rain falling on the desert, some beautiful textures in the clouds…and a single peak (hard to see) on the left horizon shrouded in light from the sun. It’s hard to beat capturing the stormy skies [...]
Sideways
Last Tuesday I teased about a lightning shot I was going to use for Movie Title Wednesday. Well, after everything that happened that Tuesday night, I never got a chance to post this. Now that the world is back to it’s normal rotation, I finally have the chance. Sideways starred Paul Giamatti, Thomas Hayden Church, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh. Two middle aged dudes take a tour through wine country and stuff happens. Saw the movie once, I don’t remember the plot too well, but of course I remember loving it. Giamatti is one of my favorite actors and he had [...]
Saguaro Alley
(click to view scaled down to your resolution with a nice black border, or if you have a huge monitor, see it a little bit bigger!) Last week Wednesday marked the first day out stormchasing the 2011 Arizona monsoon. In reality, nothing much happened other than few isolated, brief downpours over Phoenix. I met up with my buddy Chris Frailey who has joined the cause of tossing his gas money down into the gully where I dump mine…and we drove around Bush Highway a bit over by Saguaro Lake and got a few shots, but nothing “stormy” to speak of. [...]
Welcomed sight
(click to see the image fit on your screen with a black border, or larger if you have an insanely huge monitor) The clouds in this picture are child’s play compared to what is coming or what I’ve already seen this year. But it doesn’t matter…I am excited about them anyways. We haven’t had rain or a storm here in Arizona in probably a month and nothing like the towering monsoon storms that we get during the summers. Yesterday officially launched my 2011 stormchasing campaign. I had daughter-duty, so we grabbed toys, snacks, juice, dvd player, movies and whatever else [...]
Sunset on the Nevada desert
(Click to see this image with a darker border…brings out the colors a bit better) Back in March I posted a sunset shot from the Nevada desert that had powerlines and I dubbed “Se7en” for Movie Title Wednesday. There were a few other shots I got that night and I just haven’t posted any of them until now. It had been awhile since I’d seen a painted sky like this. Honestly, this wide open desert landscape was great, but I was scrambling to find something more interesting nearby to include in the frame. I realized, however, that this sunset wouldn’t [...]
Zona Communications
Vistancia is a community waaaay out on the northwest corner of Phoenix. Even from a central location like downtown Phoenix, this place is still 32 miles away. My buddy Rick Young actually lives way out there, plus some members of my family. It’s beautiful, surrounded by mountains and desert. The photo above is of the main waterfall that marks entry into the neighborhood. Zona Communications is a company that provides internet, phone and television to their customers out in Vistancia and northern Phoenix. I kind of wish they were down our way because their high-speed internet uses fiber optics technology, [...]
Snow on the Four Peaks
Back on the very last day of December, I posted a picture of the Four Peaks mountain range fresh after a snow storm hit them. You can see that one below. I didn’t process the one above for awhile after that, but eventually got around to working on it. I’m glad I did because it ended up being kind of cool for me to really see how fast things can change when viewing a landscape. The top photo occurred exactly 7 minutes and 42 seconds after the one below. I moved spots between the two captures…going lower I believe for [...]
Flowers, a bee and thirteen years
I was up in Vistancia (far northwest Phoenix) on Friday late afternoon on a little commercial shoot and as we wandered around a desert trail, these flowers demanded some attention from my camera. Last year was huge for wildflowers in Arizona…they were all over the place. On the sides of freeways, on the slopes of hills and mountains…everywhere. This year, not so much. But this little area by a pond was filled with them and it kind of reminded me of the stunning beauty of flowers in the desert. There is a bee in there too if you can find [...]
The Superstitions just before dawn
(click to see an extra larger than normal version to really fill your screen) Back in April we had some good rain on the 9th, so the morning of the 10th I planned to get up waaaaay early and head out to the Superstition Mountains to shoot a beautiful sunrise with gorgeous clouds, cactus and all kinds of juicy stuff. I was also meeting by buddy Ken Peterson out here and we’d hit the Apache Trail together. You can imagine the slight disappointment you get when you are praying for awesome clouds in the morning and this is what you [...]
Dead Rock Canyon
(Click to see full size or to fit your screen resolution) Red Rock Canyon. Dead cactus. Dead Rock Canyon. See what I did there? So clever Mike…so clever. Back in March I explored this area west of Las Vegas and was struck by these dead things. I think they are some kind of cactus, but I have no idea. I tried to Google them, but I couldn’t find anything. Either way, they kind of speckled this wide valley expanse between the red cliffs and the western mountains off in the distance. What’s interesting about going to shoot place that are [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.