A powerful microburst fell onto the desert floor south of Gila Bend on August 13th, 2012. I was moments too late to capture the birth of it, but I timelapsed what I could.
This should really give you an idea of how these things form out of nothing...a strong draft of air falls from the thunderhead and explodes in all directions. When this happens out in the desert, the dust picks up and you can see how the air ripples outwards like in a pool of water.
This was a painstaking timelapse to finish because I sadly shot it at f/18 so I could have 1/5th sec shutter speeds to hopefully give myself a chance to capture lightning (ND filters next year). And I did get a few lightning strikes actually! But it resulted in horrible dust spots and bad flicker. This is made up of 838 exposures and I manually de-flickered them because third party apps weren't working for me. That was a very, very long and tedious process. I never want to do that again.
But I felt this one was worth it and happy to be done with it now!
Tags: timelapse dust storm haboob arizona monsoon thunderstorm lightning rain clouds sunset gila bend desert
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Back on July 30th, my buddy Ken and I spent most of the afternoon and evening around the Tucson area stormchasing. On our way down there we stopped by this little agriculture field growing who knows what and watched the clouds building over the Catalina Mountains.
At first we just took pictures and tried to keep the bugs off our necks, but then I decided to do a timelapse. I think we hung around for another 45 minutes to an hour to capture the 1018 shots that went into this one.
I love the multiple downdrafts of rain you can see in this timmelapse...some of them moving, some new one forming and then dropping, it's just so beautiful to see these things in fast-motion.
I love Battlestar Galactica in general but the music by Bear McCreary is just fantastic, so he's always someone I turn to for my timelapses. I'm not including them in the video itself for copyright issues, but if you listen to "Under the Wind" by Bear McCreary from Season 3, you'll get it.
(canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 17mm, iso 100, f/16, 1018 images)
Tags: arizona timelapse catalina mountains desert storms thunderstorms monsoons rain
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This was the timelapse from the dust storm that rolled into Phoenix on August 18th.
Tags: timelapse arizona duststorm monsoons
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A couple of days ago we had a fairly epic looking storm roll into Phoenix right at sunset. The clouds were just amazing. There was a dust storm. You can see lightning on the left horizon towards the end of this video. The setting sun creating beautiful red tones was awesome. I've been torn lately between photographing things like this and doing timelapes, because I really, REALLY love seeing cloud movement afterwards. One of my favorite things in the world are timelapes of storm and cloud motion. Something we just can't see too well with the naked eye looks so incredible sped up a bit.
That being said, I'm still learning. This particular one was an experiment in using Aperture Priority. I wanted to lock the aperture and ISO, but let the shutter speed vary. Well, turns out while my controller is running, AV mode doesn't seem to change the SS unless I stopped the controller and started it again. Doh!
I'm figuring all this out as I go. I kind of like it this way. Making mistakes, figuring out why something didn't work right. Reading up on new things and not being afraid to try them out. Makes me a lot more intelligent about it all instead of just having all the answers right up front.
My goal in all of this was just to have fun and put together a cool video at the end of the storm season with a bunch of monsoon storm clips so people can see how they look out here.
I hope you enjoy this one...despite some of the varying exposures you'll get. The music is the theme to the recent Battlestar Galactica TV series because I've been dying to find a way to use it. The composer of that series, Bear McCreary, is one of my favs. He's awesome.
Tags: timelapse arizona downtown phoenix monsoons lightning rain clouds
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(note: video was definitely from July, not June like I typo-ed :) )
So last week when I was asked about the big haboob timelapse, I usually started off with saying "I was in the backyard doing another timelapse..."
This is that one.
I had been out stormchasing 4-5 nights already and was pretty beat. I figured I'd stay home that night and let the storms come to me, perhaps shoot some lightning from my balcony or the parking garage down the street. When I saw the clouds building out west, I thought to myself "Hey, I can just do a timelapse and then hang out inside, relaxing, watching TV, whatever."
Of course, a bit later, a text message sent to me with a picture of the dust storm over the San Tans forced me to leave and shoot that.
However...I was really torn. I actually was around a 60/40 between going and staying. The orange/red glow towards the end was so beautiful, I wanted to keep it going.
But my favorite part of this is the thunderstorm that builds on the right horizon and then releases rain like someone dumped it out with a giant bucket. I also dig the soundtrack a lot. My buddy Brian Matiash will want to take credit for it because he told me to use something from Inception sometime, so that's part of why I used it. But I also already have the album on my iPhone and was just searching for a minute-long song.
This track fits just perfectly with the way the sky unfolds.
The wind picks up a bit towards the end and my ex-tripod head let the camera move around somewhat. That problem has now been remedied!
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