Snow storm on the Beeline
Unless you get a nice hail storm during the summer months, it’s really rare to see pure white downpours from storm clouds, hence it was a ton of fun yesterday seeing snow falling all over the desert. I pulled over to the shoulder on the overpass at the Bush Highway/Beeline Highway intersection. Stood there for about 20 minutes watching this storm move from left to right as it slowly approached the Four Peaks off camera. Once it went by, we took off for the Four Peaks themselves and that’s when I got the image previous to this one. I had [...]
Fresh snow on the Four Peaks
Just under a year ago I captured a beautiful, slightly snowy sunset on this mountain range known as the Four Peaks.These mountains are at the 7,000 foot level, so they tend to get a dusting of snow once or twice a year. You just never know when it’s going to happen or how many times. In fact, after the previous one last January, there hasn’t been snow up there until today. Once it melts, it could be another year before it happens again (although I think we’ll see more in the coming weeks). All that to say…when there is snow [...]
Vegas Baby…Vegas
As many of you may know about me, I love to shoot the weather with the best composition I can come up with in whatever situation arises…however, sometimes all you can do is run up to the top of a parking garage and snap photos of a monster storm and not care about anything else. I was in Vegas two weeks ago during some good stormy weather, driving back to the airport with a colleague from another company, and I can’t even tell you how badly I wanted to pull the car over. I didn’t have a tripod or lightning [...]
Speed
Oh how I longed to live closer to the downtown area so I could explore taking shots like this one. Long exposures over freeways with loads of vehicles. Although, I realized when I look at this that it could basically have been taken on any ol’ freeway with a pedestrian overpass! But I love it because it’s downtown Phoenix! I also love the movie Speed, which is the name of the film for my weekly Movie Title Wednesday entry. I don’t care how much people hate Keanu Reeves and his acting (or lack of) style…I usually find him entertaining. If [...]
Signs
Well, it’s another Movie Title Wednesday and this time it may be more subtle than most, but there is a quick story behind it. Super quick. “Hey wife, what do you think of this photo?” “I like the signs.” “There are signs? Oh yeah…wait a second…” And thus we now have a title for the picture. I love it when a plan comes together. Signs was one of my more favorite M. Night films, and it was probably one of his last good ones. It had some great music, spooky moments and a cool ending where everything tied up nice [...]
October Monsoon Storm Photos: Part 1
Two weeks ago Arizona was lambasted with severe weather over the course of 2-3 days. Heavy rains, hail, dented cars, tornadoes, damage to homes and property. None of that happened to me, but I certainly enjoyed chasing it all! The first two photos are from the 4th of October where we just had some heavy rains, nothing too horrible. But after that the fun really began. I mentioned this before on another post, but I love weather photos in general and sometimes I just like to remember a scene regardless of where I was standing or what kind of crappy [...]
A final sliver of light
There is nothing more fun to me than finding an old photo you forgot to process, especially if it’s something you are excited about. This shot was taken back in January of this year out in the Usery Mountain area northeast of Phoenix. I had been sitting in this one spot waiting for the sun to set and for the clouds to move off the top of the Four Peaks. There was snow on them from a winter storm that blew through and I was worried that the clouds would never lift and it would be a wasted trip. If [...]
The Road
There is really no other appropriate title for this week’s Movie Title Wednesday image. I knew it the second I stood at this spot, soaking in the wind, the storms and the weeds bursting through this long lost road near I-17. The Road, while recently a movie, mainly hits home for me in the book form which was written by Cormac McCarthy. It came out a few years ago and even won Cormac a Pulitzer Prize. The story is bleak and harrowing, hopeless and unforgettable. The movie was almost exactly like the book, and in that way, it was hugely [...]
Ocotillo Wall Cloud
This is the second image in what will end up being many, many photos from the recent severe weather in Arizona. These storms were much more Midwest-like than anything we’re used to, especially up in northern Arizona where they now have confirmed six tornadoes touched down in a matter of 12 hours. The title of this photo calls that low hanging, dark area a wall cloud. I don’t necessarily remember seeing a ton of rotation in the thing, but then again, I had my lightning trigger out and was focused on trying to capture that stuff. I was barely paying [...]
One Man’s Trash…
…is another man’s treasure. I’ve been holding onto this one for awhile…shot it back in August along with a few other sunsets I’ve posted since then. This was one of my favorite photos from the day and sometimes you just want to HOLD onto a photo and just wait for the right time to post it. I have no idea why this was the time, or exactly why I waited…but regardless, here it is. This was just south of the I-10/SR 587 interchange…a road I had never been down before. I drove right on past this to grab the sunset, [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.