Arizona monsoon lightning photos from August 28th
My daughter sat in her little car seat, enjoying Toy Story and staying safely away from any lightning or the bazillion numbers of mosquitos I encountered last night out in the Arizona desert. Probably was a little too close to a couple of canals out there, but at times it almost felt like a swarm of bugs attacking me. I definitely have more than five itchy bites on me today. The above lightning strike was my favorite of the night. A tip to lightning photos out there (not that any of you would do this), if your car is running [...]
The Caterpillar
I rarely take photos of construction vehicles unless there is something interesting going on in the sky. I’ve seen so many awesome HDR photos of these kinds of subjects, including my buddy Brian’s awesome shot using a fisheye lens, but I just haven’t done too many myself. I found this Caterpillar Motor Grader was on site at the wastewater plant up in Williams, Arizona when I was there last week on a service call. With the stormy skies behind it, the puddles of rain and the awesome rusty features on the vehicle itself, I had to snap some brackets. The [...]
Stormy weather ahead
A couple of days ago we had some fairly severe weather develop across Arizona. Storms dumping a lot of rain and producing 60+mph winds. The cell on the left of this grouping was actually severe warned a bit after this. Damaging winds, tons of rain…good stuff. I shot this in the middle of Gilbert Road just south of Hunt Highway looking north. They are actually way across town on the very far side of Phoenix, but it’s amazing how clear the skies were that you could actually see the rain falling. Again…my love affair of roads continues. This is a [...]
Monsoon chasing on the Apache Trail
This is a little bit of an older shot taken about a month ago in July. I really wanted to post the sunset photo from last night, but I’m having trouble with getting the colors to show up correctly once I upload them to the web, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. Any help or advice would be appreciated. I took this photo on the Apache Trail road when I was out stormchasing with my buddy Brian. I thought the powerlines would ruin the shot, but for some reason I like them, along with the road of course. [...]
The birth of a monsoon dust storm
Awhile ago I posted the above photo of an awesome looking monsoon thunderstorm headed towards us. This was shot only a half-mile from my house and once it hit, we had over an inch of rain in less than an hour. One of the big bonuses of observing this particular scene was having a front seat, wide angle view of the birth of a dust storm. Now, this wasn’t going to become one of those massive haboobs you may have heard about that happen in Arizona, but it was fun to watch anyways. What you will see below is likely [...]
Holy CRAP that was close!
(See below for the uncropped version) Storms rolled into Phoenix from the southeast last night at a fairly fast clip. I was photographing some lightning off on the horizon to the northeast while waiting for the stuff south to hit us. Once it finally arrived, it was quickly evident that if you wanted to stand outside your car with a tripod to photograph lightning, you’d better have a wetsuit and waterproof housing for your camera, not to mention a personal “windshield wiper” for your lens. There was just so much water, the levels of Precip Water in the Atmo (PWAT) [...]
Flowers and Storms on Deer Park Lake
You may be wondering where the heck the lake is, but I’m kind of standing in it. At least, that’s where it should be. Sometimes there is water and sometimes not. I think the snow melt earlier in the year floods this place, forms the lake, and then once summer hits…you get fields of gold just like this. We were driving to Williams for my real job and noticed more and more flowers on the way up…and when we passed this wide open area…I knew we’d come back to it on the way home. What made it even more awesome [...]
Downpour over the San Tan Mountains
I’ve been wanting to get a shot like this all summer. I hope to get another. A storm cloud, kind of isolated, dropping rain on the desert and you can see everything from the ground to the top of the cloud. There is something amazing about seeing a giant, floating cumulus cloud with rain falling from the bottom. Almost like the rain is holding the entire contraption up in the air. I could have gotten a shot without the road or powerlines (and I did), but I like the way the lines from each create a little perspective on just [...]
Watchers of the Storm
Everyone has those “bucket list” shots you want to get someday. Yes, for me one of the big ones has to do with the weather. Shocked? Now, the shot above doesn’t completely satisfy my inner desire to get another shot like it, but it’s the kind I’m looking for. I was inspired first by this photo taken by Sabrina Henry when she was in Africa. The way the cloud seems to appear on the horizon out of nowhere with a tree in front of it…just amazing perspective. To me, there is something inspiring about a small silhouette of a tree [...]
Wandering with the Arizona monsoon: On the Apache Trail
What’s amazing about Phoenix is that stuff like this can be seen on just a short drive east of town. Now, it’s not Grand Falls or anything spectacular in the sense of landmarks or stunning vistas…but if you take the time to stop, get out of the car, walk down a short path and look around…you can see beautiful scenes everywhere. This was a short distance from a pull-off on Apache Trail, a road that takes you to Canyon Lake and eventually Roosevelt Lake. My buddy Bryan (Whom I made famous yesterday) and I made all kinds of stops along [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.