A gaggle of Cholla
(please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 17-40 f/4 l, 17mm, iso 100, f/22, 0.6sec // buy print) No, a bunch of Cholla cactus grouped together isn’t called a gaggle. But I always liked that word and felt like using it today. Sure, it usually refers to a flock of geese that are actually not flying, but according to Dictionary.com, it can also mean an assortment of related things. Feeling like that was a bunch of useless information and curious why I decided to share that with you? Me too. We’ve had an incredibly busy, [...]
A sunset on the Superstitions
. (please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 17-40 f/4 l, 17mm, f/16, iso 100, 1/4 sec // buy print) The weather predictions for winter out here in Arizona called for a La Nina pattern…meaning not much rain and not very cold temperatures. So it was kind of a surprise when December rolled in with quite a few cold fronts that dropped snow on the mountains outside of Phoenix and also an inch of rain in town. Now, of course, we’re well into our predicted La Nina winter, with temps hovering around 75-80 and no [...]
Before Sunset
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 17mm, iso 100, f/20, 1/5 // buy print) Yesterday afternoon I had a conference call that was scheduled to run to 5:30. I was praying it got over early, because the snow on the Four Peaks was amazing and I knew I had to get out there again for sunset. As luck would have it, the call ended at 4pm and I was bolting for the door. Camera gear, Lyla…her stuff, her DVD player…all of it. We both flew up the Beeline Highway to meet up with [...]
An evening out at Four Peaks
The last six weeks have been filled with nothing but photoshoots, which has been absolutely amazing and huge for me. I’m so excited about where things are headed . But it also left little time for me to get out of the house to shoot other things. And I missed that. So on Monday when there were reports of snow on the outlying deserts, I packed up the car, including my daughter, and made a beeline for…well, the Beeline Highway. And the Four Peaks area. The sky was magnificent of course, the Peaks had snow, the desert was gorgeous and [...]
Four Peaks
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 70-200 2.8 is l, 115mm, f/14, iso 100, 0.5 sec // buy print) It’s been awhile since I posted a landscape or weather photo on the blog, and even longer since I’ve actually been out shooting that stuff. But an early winter storm woke me up a bit and the reports of snow on the outlying areas of town Monday morning kicked me into gear. I picked up Lyla from the sitter just after 3pm and we made our way towards Horseshoe Lake, where I had seen snow earlier [...]
A sliver of color
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35 f/2.8, 17mm, f/16, iso 100, 0.6 sec // buy print) This was one of the last shots I took during the 2011 summer monsoons. I was about as far away from Phoenix as I’d been all year…near a town called Joseph City that I don’t recall having known existed before. The sky at sunset was pretty epic, but I found myself in somewhat of a bad spot…houses, industrial stuff around, so I kind of missed out on some clouds to my south. But I drove north along a [...]
Leaning
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 17mm, f/22, iso 400, 5 sec // buy print) The thing about wide angle lenses is that they give you the perception that things are far away. Like these lightning strikes. They probably were a decent distance aways, but I was hanging in there and hanging in there hoping to get a photo with strikes as big as possible. I was ducking down, hunched over as the storm crawled towards me and the lightning going nuts all over. This was not just a normal thunderstorm…this was a [...]
A sunset near Tucson
(click to see on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 18mm, f/22, iso 250, 6 sec // buy print) Saturday was a blast. I left the house early in the afternoon, probably between 12 and 1. I headed south where I knew it was going to be an active day and sure enough…by the time I get down to Picacho Peak, I’m on the first severe warned storm of the day. Not only that, about an hour later, as I’m still chasing it…the cell gets tornado warned. I never saw a funnel, but I had fun just [...]
Lightstorm
(Please click to view on black) Sometimes the weather forecasters predict a big storm to hit in the coming days, only to either be wrong or off a bit on the timing. But for the last 2-3 days, the National Weather Service kept saying a low pressure system would move into SW Arizona on Labor Day creating some intense storms and lots of rain. Which is exactly what happened. I had been planning on an all-day, noon-to-midnight stormchasing event for Labor Day and was pumped when Monday morning nothing in the forecast had changed. My buddy Ken met me at [...]
Red Dawn
(click to view larger on a black border…just looks better) A break from all the lightning and storms…time for Movie Title Wednesday! One of those movies that I just have to watch if I see it on the TV on a Saturday afternoon is Red Dawn. Granted, I haven’t seen it on the TV much recently and probably have watched it through only a handful of times (the last time being a very long time ago), but it’s still such a fun movie. World War II, Russians attack, Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson…hiding out in the woods, a resistance, [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.