My 2011 stormchasing trip in 7 minutes
(To view this video in HD, click right here to go to Vimeo…a lot better quality. I had a different post set for today, but the clouds this morning and the humid-ish area has me excited for the monsoon season here in Arizona which could make an appearance as early as tomorrow! I finally finished working on the video from my stormchasing trip back on May 9-11. Most of the video I shot was kind of boring since the a lot of the trip turned out to be a bust, but I put together the best clips I had. I [...]
A Nebraska supercell after dark
(Click to enjoy the storm a little bigger, almost like you were there. Okay, not really) Whew. It’s around 9am right now and I just landed in Phoenix a bit after 7am after flying out from Oklahoma City this morning. A long trip, I added around 2200 miles to the lovely Hyundai Santa Fe I rented and slept in the car two of the three nights for a total of five hours. I did actually rent a hotel on Tuesday night and it was some of the best sleep I’ve had in awhile. The bottom line from the trip was [...]
The big Stormchasing Trip of 2011
It’s Monday morning and if you are reading this, it’s likely I just posted it before boarding a plane for Denver, Colorado as I am off on my 2nd Annual Stormchasing super-duper adventure. This could lead to two things: 1) I am way too busy to post any blogs until maybe Friday and perhaps not even then…or 2) I will see some amazing stuff and will be unable to control myself and HAVE to post something. Last year I did this for basically a single day. Flew into Denver at night, drove to Nebraska, crashed at some hotel and then [...]
A closer look at the Ogalalla feed mill
A week or so ago I posted a much wider shot of this feel mill located in the small town of Ogalalla, Nebraska. It just stood out from the town like a place beckoning me to photograph it. It was old looking, boarded up and left alone…but somehow the whiteness of the silos and buildings made it feel alive somehow. This was a hand-held shot and my only wish is that I had more practice in with the lens I had rented for the trip…a 16-35mm Canon. It just wasn’t as sharp on the wider apertures.
Stormchasing: A backlit Nebraska storm
Of all the things I saw during my trip to Nebraska to chase around some storms, this scene was one of the best. I don’t even know if the HDR processing can convey what it looked like in person, but it was breathtaking. The sun back-lighting the falling rain, the scud clouds moving quickly along the surface…the dirt road running into the distance…the grass was blowing, the clouds churning…it was a sight to behold. Myself and another stormchaser were just standing here, talking, looking in awe and snapping photos. A good guy too, from the town of Ogalalla where I [...]
An old feed mill in Ogalalla, Nebraska
I have a feeling that if you dumped me in Nebraska for a week, I’d still come home wishing I had snapped just a few more photos. If you follow my work, you know I stormchased in Nebraska a few weeks ago. I drove from Denver to Ogalalla, Nebraska late at night to set up for the storms the following day. Never heard of this town, never been there before obviously, and it was just the next stop on the road with hotels and me dying for sleep at 2am. The next day I had a lot of time to [...]
An old Nebraska tree
I love all the bazillion kinds of ways to process photos. You can make something a simple black and white or go crazy with HDR or textures. The possibilities are endless. I snapped this photo during my stormchasing trip to Nebraska. It’s doubtful that normal person would have realized those puffy, cute clouds would turn into a raging thunderstorm a few hours later, but that’s another topic. While I was there for storms, I couldn’t help stop over and over again to take photos of some of the beautiful Nebraska countryside. It may be cliche or uncreative of me, but [...]
New look, new beginning
Chances are if you visit this photography site with any consistency, you’ll notice things look a little different today. This redesign has been a long time coming and I was finally motivated last week to get it done. The old design was great, but I felt it was lacking in simplicity and focus. When you arrived at the frontpage, it was hard to determine just exactly what kind of photography I did. Better yet, I felt it led visitors to believe I only did outdoor, landscape images when in fact I do much more. I love the new frontpage. The [...]
Stormchasing: More stormy skies
This is another photo from the Nebraska plains near the town of Mullen. The shot has an interesting feel to it, partly because of the HDR processing, but also the motion in the tall grasses. Before this big stormchasing adventure, I hadn’t planned on doing much HDR photography because I figured when you were up close to this stuff, the high winds would really be a disadvantage to taking multiple exposures in rapid succession. Even doing them quickly can’t keep up with 40-50mph winds and clouds that seem to be only hundreds of feet above your head. Photomatix is pretty [...]
Stormchasing: Scary clouds over the highway
My intention while I was out stormchasing was to get photographs that weren’t dominated by powerlines and other vehicles like a lot of severe weather photography is like these days. But I couldn’t resist the shot of these insanely crazy clouds over this road and the car of a few other stormchasers I was following along with. These guys were great…they pulled over alongside me earlier and asked if I was chasing, so we chatted and kind of stuck together for awhile. Good guys and it was amazing to find out how friendly people were. I met another stormchaser while [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.