This storm screamed, screamed through the Bitterroots! We heard the thunder off in the distance so I checked the lightning app. I saw the bolts were over in ID. There was a forecast for dry thunderstorms so we were paying attention as it’s wildfire season. No sooner than we did all of this and the lightning was on our front porch. I admit, at first I wasn’t thinking about putting the camera out but then my guilt took over and I set up the Z 8 / Z24-120 with the Miops pointing west. It took 7 shots and then stopped. That’s because the storm was already east! I set up the camera pointing east and it took another dozen or so photos and then the storm was north of Missoula. It did rain, poured in fact, for about nine minutes and then it stopped (glad it wasn’t a dry storm) dropping .09 of an inch. I dried off the gear and called it a night. This morning I went through the 21 images and #6 is what you see above. This is not a great lightning shot by any stretch but it sure is cool to see how the lightning danced from cloud to cloud. My vivid imagination sees two battling each other, the one on the right throwing all it can at the left. The left giving it all in one bolt. Would never have seen this with my eyes but glad I put the camera out. Mother Nature, simply amazing!

If you’ve spent a second on my website, you know I have a thing for weather. It should be no surprise that when the cool from the south meets the warm moisture from the gulf was a place I’d long wanted to travel. The thing that stopped me for so long and prevents me now from not being in the field is time. In May, 2008 I was able to put ten days in the field chasin storms. It’s a trip I’ll never forget. The first hour we saw a tornado dismantle a pig ranch and actually see pigs fly. From that moment on, I never saw nor see this weather the same. While still magical doing things with light you’ll never read about in any physics class, what these storms can do to lives is off the scale!

This particle storm was south of Kearney, NE when we first intercepted it. As we drove towards it, we saw all the cars traveling in the opposite direction. The faces I saw in those vehicles left a permanent mark. Trying to put scale with the wall cloud and rain-wrapped tornado was a huge challenge. Those shiny objects under the center or giant silos and barns. The wall cloud was massive. I’ve only been able to do two chases since this first one and long to do them again. They are a thing of wonder, the storms of summer.

Nature has reclaimed basically all that was that big buck. Just its rack and where it connects to the skull remains. The rest has produced this ocean of green with a white flower we’ve not seen before here at The Ranch. The white flowers actually trace the carcass, or, what was the carcass. The process of death and rebirth has been a little overwhelming, a bit emotional, and tremendously rewarding. Nature continually floors me!

I love, simply love using long glass for landscape photography! You can say vastness, you can create visual depth (foreground, middle ground, background), and you can even include some known object to introduce scale if you just include one more element into the mix. And that’s altitude! It might be just a small mound, could be from the roof of your vehicle, in this case, it’s a few hundred feet up on Steptoe Butte. But getting above the landscape makes it all work with long glass. I wanted to speak about the rolling hill carpet that is The Palouse and that requires shadows. I didn’t want hard shadows but soft ones which required a low sun. One of the best ways to end the day is to watch the sun race for the west from the top of Steptoe Butte. As the sun sets hundreds of great shots are all around you waiting to be captured as a long glass landscape.

Where’s the Grain Go? The Palouse is vast and its crops literally feed the world. But where does it do before we get it? The Palouse has grain elevators dotting the landscape almost as much as the grain. You find them tucked in all sorts of out-of-the-way places like this. You’re driving down gravel roads out in the middle of nowhere and you’ll come across them. Many, like this make great subject, their silvery metallic rigidness contrasty to the soft, wavy Palouse. We saw no sun today but the saturated light and the clouds were killer. It’s the magic of The Palouse as you solve the mystery of where’s the grain go?