Stormchasing: A long fence
Here’s another shot of a cool barbed wire fence in the sandy hills of Nebraska during a severe weather outbreak. The clouds are scary here, in fact, on the horizon just left of the fence, you can see a dark area that almost looks like a funnel dropping behind the hills. In fact, I was standing with a few other guys and we all thought it WAS a funnel, so within a second of taking this shot, I had ran into the truck and headed north. But the reason I love this photo is more of the fence starting on [...]
Stormchasing: Nebraska Roll Cloud
Up until now, none of the photos I’ve posted from my Nebraska stormchasing trip have been in HDR, but I thought I’d try a few and see what happened. I did three-exposures for every shot I took while out there, and it was impossible to take much more than that without an automatic method. The clouds moved so amazingly fast, doing 7-9 exposures wouldn’t work. I am loving the way a few of them turned out, so I will be posting a couple here and there. This first one is of a giant roll cloud that came racing across the [...]
The mattress
This was another spectacle on my drive to Grand Falls that caused me to flip the car around and head back to the side of the road. Where did it come from? Did someone toss it to the side of the road whilst moving at 80 mph? Did it just blow in from the land to the left of the road, where nothing existed? How long has it been there and no one taken it down? You’d think a police officer or national forest ranger would make it a point to remove this unsightly obstruction. I’m glad they didn’t. I [...]
The big skies of northern Arizona
The way to Grand Falls goes through some of the more interesting and beautiful places I’ve seen in Arizona. This mountain is part of a large group of dormant volcanoes that reside in northern Arizona. The land is full of low bushes and trees are a rarity. It made for some astounding looking mountains and hills…treeless, smooth and golden…toss in an amazing looking sky with awesome clouds and I couldn’t resist pulling the car over to take this shot.
Mailboxes, etc
(click on the image for a larger view!) The way to Grand Falls goes through Luepp Road, which was picturesque and almost as interesting to me as the Falls themselves. There were quite a few of these little mailbox clusters along the way and this scene above spoke to me so much, I actually turned around and went back a few miles to make sure I captured it before returning to my trip to the Falls. There was just something about the way the mailboxes were all huddled together, the dirt road runs off for miles and in the far [...]
Two more sunsets from downtown Tempe
I posted a shot on Monday of the Hayden Flour Mill at sunset, which you can see here again in the above panoramic view of the town of Tempe, Arizona. The sky was cooperative that night and it made for a nice sunset from the slopes of A-Mountain. Click on the photo for a larger, more detailed view. The shot below is looking north-northwest towards the Tempe Town Lake, also from A-Mountain. I love how it was just dark enough to see the string of lights running across the Mill Avenue bridges, plus a few street lights here and there. [...]
Sunset on the ol’ railroad tracks
I’ve taken quite a few photographs from this spot over the last 6 months. It’s amazing to think it’s only about 2 miles from my house (for now, until we move). I rarely try to dip from the same well more than once, but this place is fond to me. And I do try to go there for different reasons when I do. And as far as I know, they are rarely, if ever, used because I’ve stood there for a long time and never have seen a train. Last night we had some rainy-ish looking clouds roll through and [...]
Arc of Glory – Another epic Arizona sunset
(please click on the photo for a larger view) I always hear from people that Arizona seems to have the best sunsets. I actually like a lot of the ones I see shot in Florida by a few photogs I know (example). But I tend to agree about Arizona. Of course, I’m biased and also haven’t lived anywhere else *grin* Last night was another one of those. I hadn’t been out in awhile to shoot the sunset, and that was mostly because we just haven’t had much in the way of clouds and weather lately. But this week a giant [...]
Glorious morning over the San Tans
I woke up yesterday, saw the clouds, put on sandals, grabbed camera bag, told wife Starbucks was coming, left house, drove south, set up and enjoyed a nice rising sun streaming rays behind the fluffy clouds. This is Arizona. We haven’t seen clouds like this in what feels like a month. It’s nothing but sunshine now…even the green desert is starting to turn brown already. The land just south of my house is mostly fields and some farming areas, so there isn’t much in the way of excitement for the foreground of most photos (although yesterday’s shot with the dead [...]
Storms rolling across the Arizona desert
This morning I woke up, looked outside and saw fluffy clouds. The photographer switch inside of me was instantly ignited and I left the house after a few minutes. We just haven’t seen any weather in weeks and weeks…for a guy like me, that’s an eternity! It didn’t even look that spectacular out there, and in fact, the clouds you see above were the stormiest of anything and they didn’t even drop any rain. This picture almost didn’t happen. In fact, most of my best shots end up being unplanned. I had been shooting the clouds, the sky and some [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.