Epic Strike // Storm Chasing Landscape Photography

so as of right now storms have kind of died out on us so what we've done is we've gone to this beautiful park that's close by we're just outside of tucson still and there is just so much beautiful cactus in this area and it's really difficult to compose because not only do you have to be really careful when you walk because of things like rattlesnakes and cactus but also it's it's difficult compositionally i've been trying to work as quickly as i can and we only have like 10 minutes because light is failing so i haven't filmed very much it's probably a theme with this whole video i have not filmed very much but let me show you what i have shot so for this composition i'm essentially trying to if i brighten my exposure here i'm trying to simplify the chaos of you know everything that's around me by getting really really close to this cactus and then i have these three ceraro cactus in the background and they are the classic you know they have the the arm on either side they are the most cactus looking cactuses i've ever seen so i'm using those as a background element if i darken my exposure here you can see i have them fairly centered in the frame and then of course we got the sunset happening behind doing this as a probably a five shot focus stack and i'm also taking a darker frame for that background so i'll start off focusing close to camera on the closest piece of that cactus i'm also shooting this at about 13 millimeters so i'm really wide really close focusing a little deeper into the scene and i'm taking probably four or five just on the cactus close to camera alone because the closer something is to frame to the camera the greater the depth of field problem is so now i'm going to focus on background cactus make sure i've got focus take that and take one darker just to make sure i've got that highlight information i'm going to take a few frames as the light develops looks like it's going to get a little bit more colorful but the problem is we now we have lightning back this way so the mad dash mouth brush [Music] the mad dash don't poke these the mad dash that is this trip is continuing we have a crowd cloud to ground lightning back behind us cgs and we're probably going to move quickly to try to get that because ideally for photographing lightning you want to do it kind of during this you know sunset twilight time because it's easy to overpower the the ambient light with the lightning strike during the day it's very difficult at night it becomes a high dynamic range scene but the holy grail is to get one at sunset so mad dash continues [Music] so we abandoned sunset because we have a beautiful lightning storm rolling in and with all these beautiful sararo cactuses this is a shot that i've been envisioning throughout this whole trip i want lightning with a nice you know interesting sky and soraro cactus and so anyways we we came up to the the other side of this hill and trying to scramble through the desert without getting poked by a cactus or bit by rattlesnake and in a huge hurry it's so sketchy but we found this spot and i've got a couple time lapses going now i've got the a9 down here and that's got it that my 24 to 105 it's shooting pretty telephoto out trying to capture lightning bolts hitting those distant mountains and then up here i've got the a7r iv with my 12 well with a 12 to 24 not my 12 to 20 24. with a 12 to 24 shooting a wide angle composition trying to use these syrah cactus as kind of framing elements and get a lightning bolt in the background not super happy with either composition honestly but it was kind of one of those things where you have to stop at some point pick something because this storm might not last very long so once i know i've got some a few bolts to choose from i'm going to try to improve my compositions [Music] [Music] so [Music] me [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] we're dust storm hunting we're hoping that some of the storms that we're photographing today might possibly create a haboob we're in a very dry area we're gonna have a lot of high winds as you can kind of tell shooting out of these storms as they die which could in theory create a massive dust storm so that's kind of what we're hunting today it's going to be another mad frantic dash it's been incredibly hot it's about 115 degrees or so and i'm not acclimated to it at all it's very very warm yeah but here comes the storms that precipitate in a forced one which you could then we're then then we should be golden look how dark the bases are getting out so yeah you can definitely definitely see that we're starting to get precipitation here now yeah yeah it fills in and pushes then dude we're golden solid 40 45 mile an hour wind already and look how dry it is out here too so i mean all this is gonna get picked up so what i need you to do is go around and kick a lot of dust up just to start getting more lofted so what are we doing today mike besides getting a suntan uh no we're out in uh western arizona waiting on some monsoon thunderstorms to uh give us a show and that could be lightning or a haboob which you can see a lot of dust out there getting kicked up and an airplane flying in to sample the storm military too i think oh those are the a-10s yeah uh but yeah so we're waiting to see if this will kick up a haboob which is a big old dust storm right now it's it's looking rather promising and it's you know plenty early in the day so lock and change so we're just kind of waiting being patient working with the storm nerding out tanning you know filming each other so the challenge of this kind of photography is well there's a bunch of challenges first of all you're just kind of shooting in random places literally we have the interstate i8 right over here and there are so few you know roads that kind of take off from it that it's really hard to get a nice clear open view of what it is that you're trying to photograph so we were kind of lucked out and we found this little nature preserve that we were able to find a gravel road on just grab something you know something slightly less obscured like most of these shoots i'm just shooting two different time lapses at different focal lengths both at one second intervals trying to drag my shutter as much as i can just in case this storm drops any lightning bolts you know the slower my shutter speed is the more likely i am to catch a bolt but really just trying to actually get you know footage for this video and if anything cool happens we'll be able to show that motion if a haboob does form right out here i want to get a nice time lapse of it rather than just a is this has got still fill in i wonder so the reality of these kind of stops is that you're dealing with stuff like this just trying to find any kind of foreground we have a really cool storm cell this way let me show you we have a really cool storm cell going up right here really strong rain shaft and then we got a second storm cell over this way and there is some lightning in this so we hope we're hoping that it starts dropping bolts there's only been a few lightning strikes and actually in any of these storms which is really strange because they're really strong storms we're just trying to uh be ready when they do start dropping bolts because it's got everything that needs it's really hot it's really humid a lot of rain dropping just want to be in the right place so in order to be in the right place we gotta keep tracking it which means we end up shooting at random places right next to highways not the best for audio quality i apologize but that's how these shoots go so compositionally i'm using the 12 to 24 i'm shooting about 20 millimeters tilted up really emphasizing the sky because if i tilt this camera up you can see we got a really prominent rain shaft and then nice detailed clouds and if we can get some nice lightning strikes in between this cell and this cell it'll be pretty cool so i'm just shooting a time lapse with this camera hoping for something cool to happen [Music] so [Music] so this is the third stop of tonight's chase it's been a mad dash we've covered a lot of miles just trying to get on a storm that would actually last for a while and back here back here we had a little bit of magic happen just a little bit ago there's an observatory up there right on this tallest peak in this mountain range and well yeah pretty special oh my god so why don't you explain what just happened michael shane bloom lightning hit the mountain the top of the mountain right right at the um to the left of the observatory and and so i'm framed at 200 millimeters vertical and the lightning just came right down from the top of the frame and you can visually see where it's striking which is uh you know it's my fa i haven't shot an image like that and show me the back of your camera oh let's let's take a look at this i only got one image like this in my life and it was in 2014 or 15 out by death valley i got a strike of a a a lightning strike hitting a mountain peak but i mean to have it this close up there's where it hits the ground and you know just coming this is uncropped just it i'm not gonna crop it this is exact like even with the other lightning stuff that i shot back in 2015 of the of the lightning hitting the mountain i still had to crop and do some things to make like this is it's like the best birthday present yeah so that we have to say it's your birthday so my birthday today thank you incredible display there wasn't a lot of bolts but the ones that they that were there were really impressive there was one that was closer unfortunately my my wide angle composition the card filled and i didn't notice and i missed both bolts with my wide shot but i did get a telephoto version i like his composition better but you know by the time i'm done with it my composition is going to look a hell of a lot like yours i'm just saying i got really lucky with the framing i was just like well this is the most pleasing with the mountain you know just kind of having the observatory almost in the middle i hope it hits i don't know like i have the wide over there so that's great but this is just like a hail mary i hope it hits up there somewhere that's incredible like that out of all how many times you shoot lightning and get a vertical tight end like that well yeah a well lined up yeah i mean that that shot is that's called a birthday present right there thanks man i am so stoked on this i haven't been stoked on an image for a while like this that's tech sharp too man i haven't been stoked about one of your images for a while either that was both a really good insult and compliment all at the same time dude seriously though that composition is amazing to get it in camera so perfect no crop needed i gotta call my mom [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] foreign you

Channel: Nick Page

Views: 37,846

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, nick page, travel, Lightning, storm chasing, storm photography, Michael Shainblum, vlog

Id: qdB83230wWI

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021