I grew up in northern Idaho and moved to Tucson, AZ in 1988 with the US Air Force.  Prior to moving to Tucson I spent a year in central Illinois where I experienced, and photographed my first tornado (I am still looking for those images) and that was what really got me interested in storms and extreme weather.  After moving to Tucson I was really impressed with the summer monsoon and the beauty of the lightning that comes with it.  After many years of watching and photographing storms in Tucson, you get to know the weather patterns and can anticipate what is going to happen every afternoon.  If a storm is forming over the Catalina Mountains, you know where you need to setup to get the shots that you hope are there.

If a fast moving storm is coming through the area, and many of our summer monsoons are very fast moving, you might only have time to get setup and grab 2 or 3 images before the inch plus an hour rain and lightning are right on top of you.  After doing this for years, you will have a handful of places that you can count on.  You wont have to search for a good place to park, you won’t have to worry about flash flooding in the area and you will know the compositional elements of the area.  All of this leads to being very efficient at getting a spectacular lightning image.

You don’t realize it at the time, but summer monsoon photography almost becomes automatic.  You have your gear setup in the way that works for you, you have your favorite places in the back of your mine and you simply expect to make some great images though the couple month season.

You then decide to move 100 miles north and that changes everything.

We moved to the Phoenix area at the end of August 2009.  Even though a few storms still came through after we moved, we were so busy with getting settled into our new house that I didn’t even have all my camera gear unpacked yet.  Summer of 2010 marked my first season of storm chasing in the Phoenix area, and while 100 miles may not seem like a lot, it really changed everything.  I had no experience with the local weather patterns, and 100 miles can make a huge difference there.  I also had no tried and true stable of known locations to shoot from.  I spent way too much time this season trying to find a safe-ish place to shoot from and not nearly enough time actually behind the camera.

I got a few shots that I am proud of, but not nearly as many lightning shots as I would have liked.  Granted, a part of that was the fact that many of the storms this season happened earlier in the afternoon during daylight hours, but as I mentioned, I missed a lot of images by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I look forward to next season as I have a few places now that I know will serve me well in the future.  I have a little better understanding of the weather patterns in the Phoenix area and where the storms form.

If you scroll though some of the recent posts here, you will see some of the results of my efforts.  I am also linking to past storm chasing galleries, but you can always click on the “galleries” button at the top of this page and see everything.

2008 Storm Chasing
2009 Storm Chasing
2010 Storm Chasing

That’s it for now.  I hope that everyone has a great weekend, and with any luck we might have one or two more storms come though before the end of the season.

If there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I know where there were two of them yesterday afternoon.  This image has everyone that an Arizona storm chaser could ask for except for a bolt of lightning.  This image was taken just a little north of Florence, AZ.

This is actually a 9 image HDR, I know that seems a little excessive but I wanted to make sure to not blow out any highlights.  It was tone mapped with Photomatix Pro and touched up in Photoshop CS5.  As always, please click on the image to see a larger version.

Things are shaping up to be a decent afternoon / evening for weather today and in the meantime I thought I would work on a bit of my backlog of images from the last month or so.  This image is a slightly different version of the black and white one I had posted earlier.  It is a 9 image HDR, the RAW images were taken handheld out near Parker, AZ.  I was actually trying to get some daytime lightning shots, and while I saw at least 50 bolts, I missed each and every one of them.  Tone mapping was done in Photomatix and final touchup was taken care of in CS5.  As always, click on the image to see a larger version.

It hasn’t been a great monsoon season for lightning photography this year.  We have had storms, but in many cases they happened earlier in the evening long before the sunset, or the cloud cover has been so dense that all you had was a huge, sky sized, soft box.  All is not lost though, there has been a few good shots along the way and hopefully there will be a few more.

As always, click on the image to see a larger version.

What’s the old saying about when life gives you lemons?  This has been a terrible season so far for lightning photography, but there has been some dramatic skies.  This image was taken near Parker, AZ in western Arizona.

This is another lightning shot I got out in Maricopa, AZ last night.  This season will be winding down over the next few weeks, but hopefully there are a few more shots out there.

Please click on the image to see a larger version.

After weeks of let down, I was finally able to capture a couple lightning images.  Storms in the forecast for tonight as well. Wish me luck.

I decided to brave the 100+ temps today, it was a chilly 95 in my garage, and get the body (tub) off of Sancha.  She is starting to look a lot less like a Landcruiser, but this was a huge step forward on this project.  Next step will be power washing and painting the frame.  After that it will be time to start working on rebuilding a couple axles.

BBC Life – Plants (On Location) in HD

2 years of work for a single 60 second shot. Amazing.

I can’t really begin to tell you how much I learned last night when we were out trying to shoot the Perseid meteor shower.  When you think you are far enough away from city lights, go further.  I also learned that you have to keep an eye on your shutter speed. I ended up shooting most things at around 30 seconds, but that is really too long.  If you want the stars to look like stars, you have to keep it around 10 seconds or so.

I didn’t get all that many shots that had the “shooting stars” actually showing up, but this is one of the ones I did get.  It has a “shooting star” and an airplane in the same frame.  I had a blast doing this, and look forward to taking last nights lessons with me to the next time I try this.