This is another, single frame, view of Tropical Depression Hermine as it spread its feeder bands across North Texas on Tuesday evening near dusk. The satellite imagery of this storm was quite impressive. As you can see here the sky was also impressive as the storm’s eastern side sweeped over the Metroplex. Thanks, Hermine, for providing me with the opportunity to capture such beautiful images of you!
Important Note: The panoramic image below is quite large at 1920 pixels wide. In order to fit into the post, the image had to be shrunk to an extremely small size, thereby making it very difficult to appreciate the image as a whole. As a result, please feel free to click on the thumbnail, shown below, to bring up a larger version of the image that will scale according to your specific screen size.
Having missed out on all the excitement of a tornado touchdown near Benbrook earlier in the afternoon, I was determined to make the best of things and capture Tropical Storm Hermine at dusk in all of its turbulent, ringed glory. Thankfully, the tropical storm put on quite a show at just the right time during magic hour to allow me the opportunity to capture a series of images sufficient to create a gorgeous, sweeping panorama of the storm’s feeder bands moving over Grand Prairie.
The above panoramic image is a composite of 7 separate photos. Post-processing was rather minimal for this image, as the magic hour light was quite nice and allowed for an almost perfect exposure for each image. As a result, I only performed minor exposure, masking, and curves adjustments. No color balancing was applied, either, as the existing colors did a perfect job of capturing the mood of the scene. As usual, I finished the image with the customary sharpening in Lab mode via Unsharp Mask.
This is my Weather Video Reel. It is recommended that you load the 1080p version of this video and watch it full screen.
This is last year’s storm chasing video. Enjoy!
Yesterday, Thursday, April 22, 2010, I watched and captured a highly photogenic tornado on the Caprock as it churned through open-country. Thankfully, this tornado caused no injuries or damage. The tornado was witnessed by many chasers along Highway 287 north of Clarendon, TX, but I was lucky enough to have found a somewhat paved country/residential road that took me away from the pack for my own private viewing of the tornado. As it turns out, this little country road enabled me to capture some astounding and absolutely gorgeous images of the tornado as it swirled across the open-country. Check out the gallery below for my favorite photos of the twister.
Couple of notes. First, I decided to not edit any of these images, except for basic straightening when needed. I haven’t even cropped any of them. These images are all straight from the camera; they were imported into Lightroom and then converted to JPEG for web viewing. I will post an edited and finished version of my favorite capture from the series below in another post tomorrow. Second, the images in the gallery are sequential with time, meaning they are placed in order as the tornado evolved over time. Finally, I do have video forthcoming, but it will take a while for me to capture, process, and edit the video clips. The video should be posted early next week. Enjoy!
Typical, turbulent North Texas sky in the spring. Always inspiring to me when I see it.
So, today marks the beginning of a new post series on this blog. Once a week I will post a photo that was shot and edited entirely with my iPhone. This week’s photo was captured in Arlington’s first cemetery during February’s historic snow storm that dumped a foot of snow on the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.
On my way to school, and the Trig test that waited for me there, I happened to check the radar on my iPhone while it rested in it’s windshield mounted cradle. Much to my surprise I noticed a line of storms working its way through Abilene, a few hours to the west of Fort Worth. I made a mental note and continued my early morning trek to downtown Fort Worth, soothed by the sounds of the King Crimson side project, Projekct Three.
Upon emerging outside on the top floor of the parking garage after completing my Trig test, I couldn’t help but notice the large, snaky squall line draped across the western horizon. My heart skipped a beat as I quickened my walking pace to my car, my brain already in chase mode. How could it have covered such a distance in just a little under two hours? I practically sped through the parking garage, took a side exit that let out onto Hwy 199/Old Jacksboro Highway, and drove north a few miles to a vantage point I know well. One of the two best photos from the chase was captured from that vantage point and is shared below. What a way to start the 2010 chase season! I’m ready for more action!
As mentioned in my previous post on this site, we experienced an historic snow storm in Dallas, TX during the February 11 – 12, 2010 time period. What’s even more monumental than the storm itself is the fact that I was off for the two best days of the entire event. Of course, I went positively nuts photographing every scene I could possibly come across or dream up, and even then I missed many opportunities due to sheer lack of time. Regardless, I shot 8 GBs worth of photographs – roughly 800 photographs in RAW format – and just recently finished distilling everything and scraping the best of the bunch off my hard drive for digital darkroom finishing and magic. Below are my two favorites. Sometime over the next week I will update the gallery on this site with a few more images from the event, as time allows. Enjoy!
It is not very often that I get to take advantage of historic weather events. I am usually working or in class, or somehow otherwise occupied. Not today! Today I was blessed with being scheduled off and, it just so happened that a historic snow storm blew into North Texas, dumping a whopping 7 inches of snow so far, and it hasn’t stopped yet! Of course, I had no choice but to take advantage of this rare opportunity, and boy did I ever! My first stop was a visit to the awesome, amazing, wonderful folks over at Arlington Camera to rent the Canon 50mm f/1.2L lens to shoot with for the day. It was a good rental decision, as the lens never left my camera body. It is quite a breathtaking lens. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I am planning on purchasing the lens later this year so I can shoot with it all the time. As a matter of fact, I intend to only shoot with it once I purchase it, since the focal length is just perfect for all the things that I shoot. It will definitely be a worthwhile investment.
Back to today, I captured a ton of photos, and below is one of my favorites. I experimented a lot with trying to capture falling snow flakes against a completely blurred background; hence the reason for renting the 50mm f/1.2L in the first place. After a lot of trial and error, I finally found the sweet spot concerning focus and depth of field. Of course, at an aperture of 1.2, there really is no depth of field anyway! The below photo is, again, processed in black and white. I have some color captures from today, but there is something about black and white that just keeps screaming out to me lately. Besides, snowy scenes tend to look much better in black and white anyway, in my opinion. Enjoy!
