Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Hold My Gear (the Sequel)
Posted on October 18, 2025
Color and Clouds, North Lake Autumn Reflection, Eastern Sierra
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 GM II
1/100 seconds
F/9
ISO 100
After sharing in my prior post that I’ve been lugging a 30 pound camera bag through airports, it occurred to me that I haven’t updated you on the ever-changing contents of said camera bag lately. But before I continue, let me remind you that a photographer’s gear choice is no more relevant to his images than a writer’s pen is to her stories, or a chef’s cutlery is to her cuisine. Yes, these choices might make a difference on the fringe, but I imagine most would agree that a great chef will almost certainly get better results with Kirkland knives (with all due respect to Costco) than an average chef would get with top-of-the-line Zwilling.
But that doesn’t mean that I would voluntarily discard my current gear for some other brand. Far from it. I love the gear I use, and am always happy to share why. So what follows is a revised version of the first Hold My Gear post, from 2021—below that, you’ll find the story of today’s image.
I’ll start with my camera bag
Shimoda Action X50 with a Large Core Unit: This bag simply checks all the boxes for me: for starters, it’s large enough to carry everything I consider essential, with room to spare for a few things that are less than essential and that may change depending on the trip and my objective. In addition to 2 bodies and 5 lenses, it fits all the miscellany I always want with me (headlamp, rain and/or cold weather apparel, extra batteries and media cards, tools, among many things).
But more than capacity, my bag also needs to be comfortable on long hikes—whether across rugged High Sierra terrain, Iceland’s winter icescapes, or the endless concourses of Sydney International Airport—and (just as important) it must fit fully loaded into any overhead compartment I encounter. My Shimoda passes all these tests with flying colors.
Always in my bag
- Sony a7R V and Sony a1 bodies
- Sony 12-24 f/2.8 GM lens: Though I don’t use it as much as a couple of other lenses, having a lens as wide as 12mm allows me to photograph things I never could before, and I love that it’s still relatively compact.
- Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM II lens (plus a Breakthrough polarizer), which is usually mounted on the a1: This focal range is covered by other lenses in my bag, but I love the lens too much to leave it behind—crazy sharp, and f/2.8 means it’s fast enough for night photography in a pinch. Plus, unlike the 12-24, I can use it with conventional polarizing and ND filters.
- Sony 24-105 G lens (plus a Breakthrough polarizer), which is usually mounted on the a7R V: Not only is this lens wonderfully sharp, its middle-of-the-road focal range fits so many situations—it’s no wonder this lens is my workhorse.
- Sony 100-400 GM lens (plus a Breakthrough polarizer): Replacing my 70-200 with this slightly bigger lens doubled my focal range, without adding tons of extra weight—and it’s a good match with the Sony 1.4X teleconverter.
- (Usually) Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM lens: This is my night lens, and though I only use it at night and don’t do night photography on every trip, since I have a slot for it and it’s not too heavy, my 14 GM usually just lives in my camera bag.
- Sony 1.4X teleconverter—I used to use the 2X, but found a noticeable sharpness improvement after switching to the 1.4X.
- Filters: Breakthrough 72mm and 77mm neutral polarizers (nearly fulltime on the 16-35, 24-105, and 100-400 lenses), Breakthrough 72mm and 77mm 6-Stop Dark polarizing filters (to switch out with my standard polarizers when I need a longer shutter speed).
- Memory cards: Each camera has two 128 GB Sony Tough cards, then I have a handful of other 128 GB and 64 GB SD cards rattling around in a pocket, just in case.
- Other stuff: Lens cloths, headlamp, insulated water bottle, extension tubes, memory cards, multiple spare batteries, Giotto Rocket Blower, and a couple of Luna Bars (because photography always trumps meals).
Specialty Equipment (lives in a second camera bag that gets tossed in the back of the car and stays there when I don’t need to fly to my destination)
- Sony 20mm f/1.8 G lens: For Milky Way and other moonless night photography—this one’s even more compact than the 24mm.
- Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM lens: For Milky Way and other moonless night photography—I can’t believe how compact this lens is.
- Sony 90mm Macro: I use this lens a lot with extension tubes to get super close for my creative selective focus work (wildflowers, fall color).
- Sony 200-600 G lens: When I want to go big on a moonrise/moonset—often pared with the 1.4x teleconverter. I also use this lens with extension tubes for selective focus fall color and wildflowers.
- 2 Stepping Stone LT-IV Lightning Triggers
Support
- Really Right Stuff Ascend-14L tripod with integrated head: Absolutely the best combination of light, tall, and sturdy I’ve ever found in a tripod. It’s so light and compact that I just attach it to my camera bag, even when flying, and just forget about it until it’s time to shoot (never a problem with TSA).
- Really Right Stuff 24L Tripod with a RRS BH-55 ball head: Sturdy enough for whatever I put on it, in pretty much whatever conditions I encounter. I also like that, even though it doesn’t have a centerpost, when fully extended (plus the head and camera), it’s several inches taller than I am. As much as love my Ascend, this is my tripod of choice in strong wind, or when I’m shooting extra long. As with my bag that carries my specialty lenses, this tripod usually lives in the back of my car and doesn’t usually fly with me (it would need to go in the suitcase), but is always available when I drive to a destination.
Color and Clouds, North Lake Autumn Reflection, Eastern Sierra
A few words about today’s image
Thanks to a great group and beautiful conditions, this year’s Eastern Sierra workshop was a great success. Though today’s image didn’t come during the workshop, you could call it ES workshop adjacent, because it came the day before the workshop, on my annual pre-workshop scouting visit to North Lake.
As familiar as I am with all my locations, I hate taking my groups to locations I haven’t been to in a year, because you just never know what might have changed. That’s especially important when the goal is fall color, which can vary significantly from year to year. It’s not always practical to pre-scout every location, but I do my best to make it happen when I can.
For my Eastern Sierra workshop, I always leave early the morning of the day before the workshop, which gives me time to hit all my spots on the way down. I can make it as far as Bishop, which makes for a long day, but from Bishop can finish my scouting the next morning by driving the final hour to Lone Pine, and leaving early enough to get eyes on my Lone Pine locations (Whitney Portal, Mt. Whitney, and the Alabama Hills) before the workshop starts that afternoon.
With the workshop always starting a Monday, Sunday is dedicated to scouting my locations. But this year’s Sunday scouting mission was a little problematic because I’d only just returned from Jackson Hole at 9 p.m. Saturday night, after assisting Don Smith’s Grand Teton National Park workshop (I’d get instant payback because Don would be assisting my Eastern Sierra workshop). After unpacking and repacking, the plan was to rise dark and early Sunday morning and be on the road by 7:00 a.m. This year, instead of bounding out the door at 7:00, I pretty much dragged myself out (with a shove from my wife) closer to 8:30. Still enough time, but not a lot of wiggle room.
I perked up pretty quickly once on the road, helped no doubt by an intermittent light-to-moderate rain that followed me down 395, and (especially) the beautiful clouds that came with it—a significant upgrade from the chronic blue skies that often plague this trip.
To ensure that I made it up to North Lake before dark, I didn’t take my usual swing through the June Lake Loop, and skipped the drives up to the McGee Creek and Mosquito Flat trailheads as well. Since these aren’t workshop stops (though I do recommend them as possible extra locations for anyone looking to photograph more color on the drive from Bishop to our Lee Vining hotel on Day 3), I felt okay about missing them in favor of North Lake.
On the steep ascent up Bishop Creek Canyon, I got a front row view of the peaks playing hide and seek with the clouds. By the time I climbed the last mile on the (mostly) unpaved, one-lane road to North Lake, a few sprinkles dotted my windshield. With so much workshop prep on my mind, I virtually never photograph at any point on this pre-workshop scouting trip, but for some reason (beautiful sky), this time I swung my camera bag onto my back for the 100-yard walk from the parking area to the lakeshore. I was beat, and hungry, and with darkness coming soon, I just wanted to get back to Bishop to check-in to my hotel to prepare (and rest up) for the workshop—but if the lake is real nice, maybe I’ll fire off a couple of frames before calling it a day.
The color couldn’t have been better, and the clouds were off the charts. A couple of other photographers were set up on the lakeshore where I usually like to shoot the reflection, but with a light breeze spreading small ripples across the water, I passed on the reflection in favor of the gold and green grass to fill my foreground.
After about five minutes I was pretty happy with what I had and was just about to pack up when I noticed that the water across the lake had flattened out, and a reflection had formed. It was a long way away and hardly visible, but looking closer, I could see the stillness expanding toward me. Soon—in no more than a minute—the entire lake surface a calmed to a reflection and all thoughts of leaving vanished.
With my usual reflection spot occupied, I moved about 30 feet closer to the road, to a tiny micro-cove sheltered by grass and a large rock. Here you can’t get as much reflection, but being so sheltered, it’s usually the last place the reflection leaves if a breeze picks up.
Given the narrowness of my foreground reflection here, combined with beautiful clouds and light high above, I opted for a vertical composition. Dropping lower, I positioned myself to include two small rocks as foreground anchors, then composed wide to include as much sky and reflection as possible.
Despite occasional sprinkles, the rain mostly held off and I ended up staying for nearly an hour, finally moving over to my usually spot when the other photographers moved on.
This was Sunday evening. I returned with my group for sunrise Wednesday morning. I was pretty confident the color would still be great, but crossed my fingers all the way up the canyon hoping we’d get a reflection. I was right about the color, and the reflection gods smiled on us as well, delivering an absolutely flawless mirror atop the water. We also had a couple of clouds, but nothing like my evening a couple of nights earlier, and as excited as my group was, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I had it even better.
I Love Reflections (Perhaps You Noticed)
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Things Always Work Out…
Posted on October 10, 2025
Setting Crescent Moon, Grand Teton, Grand Teton NP
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
.8 seconds
F/16
ISO 100
I’m a naturally positive person who doesn’t have to work too hard to stay optimistic about pretty much everything. And while this “things always work out” philosophy generally serves me quite well, it can sometimes cause problems. Case in point…
A couple of weeks ago I was in Jackson Hole to help out Don Smith with his Grand Teton workshop. Back in the pre-Covid days, when Don and I would trade off assisting several of each other’s workshops every year, my annual Jackson Hole trip was one I especially looked forward to. Since I hadn’t been there since 2018, returning this year was a particular treat.
In addition to the incomparable beauty of the Tetons, Jackson itself is has a great little downtown that I make a point of walking daily when I’m there. With so many shops, galleries, and restaurants, it’s hard to spend quality time at each, but the one place I always make sure I get to is Tom Mangelsen’s gallery on Cache Street.
This year I had so much other stuff on my plate, by the time our final day arrived, I still hadn’t made it there. So I got a late checkout and carved out a couple of morning hours to walk down there, browse, and return before heading to the airport.
While enjoying the beautiful gallery, I couldn’t help patting myself on the back for allowing enough time to feast on every print displayed without feeling rushed. Even though I’d estimate that at least 80% of Mangelsen’s images are of wildlife, and I don’t photograph wildlife, I couldn’t help but feel the inexplicable kindred connection that draws me to a very small cadre of nature photographers whose motivation seems, rather than to dazzle or impress, simply to share their own very personal relationship with natural beauty as it touches them. And while I won’t pretend to have tapped those instincts to the extent Mangelsen and those few others have, their images have a profound influence on me.
As much as I’d have loved to leave with a Mangelsen print, I knew that would be far beyond my ability to transport home (not to mention my budget). But during my meanderings I couldn’t help notice the variety of beautiful Tom Mangelsen coffee table books displayed throughout the gallery. Last year I wrote a post about, among other things, my relationship with coffee table books, and how it saddens me that the coffee table photo book appears to be a declining medium., so it always thrills me to encounter signs of CTB life. On a whim I asked if any of the books were signed (I’d looked but found none) to my delight she not only did she point me to some, she said there was no price premium for the signed books.
For context, I’m of the pre-selfie generation, coming of age way back in the time autographs, not selfies, were the ultimate commemoration of a transient connection to greatness. (Another nice thing about autographs is that they can be acquired without bothering a person who is most likely quite tired of accommodating intrusive strangers.) Though I’m not a collector, over the years I’ve assembled an eclectic inventory of signed memorabilia from people I admire.
How eclectic? Well, I have a baseball signed by Ted Williams; a bottle of wine signed by Mick Fleetwood; “August and Everything After,” in vinyl, signed by all of Counting Crows; CDs signed by Michael Franks and Pat Metheny; two signed Galen Rowell prints; and a personal postcard from Wallace Stegner. (And the person who scores me a cartoon personally signed by Gary Larson would be a friend for life.) So anyway, getting a signed Tom Mangelsen book just seemed like the thing to do.
I’d be lying if I said I’d forgotten that, on my flight out, my suitcase weighed in at 51 pounds, one pound above the checked bag limit, forcing me to transfer a pound worth of miscellany to my already 30-pound camera bag. (My computer bag, which must fit under the seat to qualify as a personal item, weighs about 10 pounds and was already stuffed to the brim.) Nevertheless, I of course chose the largest, heaviest Mangelsen book: “The Last Great Wild Places”— a whopping 12×18 inches and (including the lovely protective carryall) about ten pounds. My plan for how I was going to travel with an additional 10 pounds? It’ll work out.
Unfortunately, somehow the woman at the Jackson Hole United Airlines counter didn’t get that memo. While packing, after adding my new book, I’d made a token effort to transfer a few more things to my camera bag (oh yeah, I’d also purchased some T-shirts for me, a sweatshirt for my wife, plus a pound of coffee, so my suitcase was starting out even heavier than before), and strategically positioned a few other heavy-ish items near the top of the suitcase for easy access in case more transferring was required. At the airport, I held my breath as I hefted my suitcase onto the scale, flashing my best, “Hey, I’m nice guy—work with me here” smile. The counter person looked at the scale, then back at me, and issued her best, “You’ve got to be kidding me” stare. When I feigned ignorance, she simply said, “You’re ten pounds over.” Sigh.
After shifting my pre-staged heavier items and discovering that I was still seven pounds overweight, a small amount of panic started to leak in. Fortunately, we’d arrived at the airport more than 3 hours early. After 45 minutes of shifting, repacking, and reweighing (at least four times) I passed the weigh-in and queued up for TSA. (My new United airlines “friend” wouldn’t even reward me for getting down to just 1/2 pound over.)
I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say, if the plane had gone down and they sent my recovered belongings to my wife, she’d no doubt be scratching her head trying to figure out why my camera bag included a one pound bag of ground coffee, my toiletry kit, a Bluetooth speaker, and a pair of hiking boots—and why my computer bag also included a coffee mug, umbrella, and several pairs of socks.
But the bottom line is, after countless failed weigh-ins, then lugging (not to mention babysitting) over 50 pounds of bulky carryon through the Jackson Hole, (incomprehensibly large) Denver, and Sacramento airports, I did indeed make it home with the signed Tom Mangelsen book that’s now on display in my office. So I guess things really do work out.
Speaking of things working out
The workshop shoot that resulted in today’s image was not part of Don’s Grand Teton workshop master plan. It was an opportunistic response to a fortuitous confluence of blank skies and a crescent moon that just happened to come at the right time this year.
When scheduling a photo workshop, we have no idea of the conditions we’ll encounter. While I schedule many workshops using the moon as a hedge against blank skies, other factors can and do take priority—like fall color in a fall color workshop. Since this was Don’s workshop, I had nothing to do with the schedule, but I knew this one had to be scheduled for the best chance of peak fall color, moon be damned. (And to say Don nailed the fall color timing this year would be an understatement.)
Having just returned from my Hawaii Big Island workshop, and knowing I was departing for my Eastern Sierra workshop the day after returning from Jackson Hole, the moon had been the last thing on my mind until just a day or two before the workshop started. That we’d have a crescent moon in the west shortly after sunset had been on Don’s radar long before that, but we both agreed that it would probably be too far south to align with any of our prime sunset locations. But when mostly clear skies were forecast for the workshop, Don and I revisited the moon as a potential blank sky antidote to follow one of the workshop’s sunsets, and decide that we could indeed make it work.
After pulling up some topo maps and solar/lunar data, I plotted the waxing crescent’s altitude and azimuth for each evening of the workshop and determined that Thursday night would be the time to go for it. Then Don and I scouted the potential locations, both on maps and in person, and found a spot on the road between Jackson Lake and Oxbow Bend that would align the moon perfectly with Teton Peak on Thursday evening.
When the day arrived, we followed a nice sunset at Jackson Lake with a short drive to our predetermined spot, arriving in the warm glow of early twilight. To my eye the view here was the spectacular peaks to our south and west, but I couldn’t help notice that just across the the road and facing north (backs to the mountains), a dozen or so photographers were pointing very long glass at something far across the meadow. I looked more closely and barely made out a pair of elk doing whatever elk do (no, not that). Whatever. (Okay, seriously, I understand the appeal of wildlife photography, it’s just not for me.)
We landscape shooters pointed in the complete opposite direction, toward the brightening crescent hanging above Grand Teton, arguably America’s most striking mountain. To align the moon and peak with the foreground I wanted, I jogged about 5o yards down the road, staying only long enough to get a few frames. But being down there also gave me a great perspective of the conflicting priorities on display: wildlife shooters on one side of the road pointing north, landscape shooters on the other pointing south (it was actually a pretty amusing sight I wish I’d thought to take a picture of). I imagine they were just as baffled by our choices as I was about theirs.
Even though this moonset wasn’t a “featured” shoot of the workshop (people were there for fall color and the many views of the Tetons), it’s a great example of how things really do work out. Don and I used to stress about the conditions in a workshop and whether people might be disappointed, but we learned a long time ago that if you stay prepared and flexible, there will always be great stuff to photograph—and things really do work out.
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A Peek at Peaks
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Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 2: Grand Finale
Posted on September 29, 2025
Fountain of Fire, Kilauea Eruption, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 400
f/5.6
1/125 second
For the full context of my experience with Kilauea eruptions in general, and the events leading up to the fountaining portion of this episode (33), check out my prior blog post: Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 1: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance…
The euphoria of our (very) early Thursday morning Kilauea eruption shoot powered my workshop group through the day and into Thursday night. Since we hadn’t made it back to the hotel until 4:00 a.m., I pulled the plug on our sunrise shoot (with zero objections), and the group didn’t gather again until our 1:00 p.m. image review session. It turns out many were so excited by the eruption experience, they opted for downloading and processing over sleep, but the few eruption images we did see definitely turbocharged the eruption enthusiasm.
The discussion during the afternoon meeting centered around whether the fountaining we saw was Kilauea’s new normal, or whether there might be more to come. My inherent optimism went straight to the fact that the prior episode (episode 32, in early September) had delivered the second greatest volume of lava to the caldera floor of all the episodes —the most of 2025 so far. And the latest USGS report said that continuing inflation at the summit meant more was coming. Yay.
The pessimist in me, that annoying little voice that keeps reminding me of the times Mother Nature has thrown cold water on high hopes, kept reminding me of the signs that the reliable eruption sequence that started in December 2024 might be flagging: the fountain height of recent eruptions had decreased significantly from its 1000+ foot peak; the gap separating each fountaining phase was increasing; and most significantly (in my mind), live webcams focused on the eruption’s vents showed that the activity we’d photographed the prior night had completely died—only smoke was visible where we had once seen bubbling, flowing lava.
Shortly after the image review session, we departed for the workshop’s sunset shoot at my favorite beach on the Puna Coast. That evening’s spectacular sunset pushed the eruption buzz to the background, and in a way felt like a fitting wrap-up to a fantastic workshop. We did have one more sunrise shoot planned, but I think everyone felt like it would be anticlimactic following all we’d photographed in the workshop so far. In fact, with flights to catch and coming off a night with very little sleep, when I suggested that we stay in Hilo and stick to the sunrise plan even if the eruption resumed during the night, the agreement was unanimous—we’d already had a great volcano shoot that would be tough to beat. (We’d already been up to Kilauea twice, so I also suggested that anyone who changed their mind should feel free to go up on their own if the eruption started.)
That plan lasted until 3:30 a.m. One of the workshop participants (who had his office manager in Ohio, where midnight in Hawaii is 6 a.m., monitoring the Kilauea webcams and reporting any changes) messaged the group, “It’s fountaining!” I was sound asleep, but the messaging frenzy that followed quickly roused me enough to grab my phone and check the webcam. I instantly knew the sunrise plan was out the window and we were going back to Kilauea, sleep be damned. When he said fountaining, he meant FOUNTAINING!!!
This fountaining was on an entirely different scale from what we’d seen the prior night, or even from anything I’d ever seen—like someone had kicked a giant sprinkler head on the caldera floor. (I learned later that it was the highest fountaining since early July.) Almost all of the group was wide awake and on the road in 20 minutes.
Even though we arrived before 5:00 a.m., a little more than an hour after the fountaining began, the park was much more crowded than we’d seen the previous night. We found parking, but just barely, and I knew the way cars were streaming into the park the open spaces wouldn’t last long.
Because of the crowds, we’d implemented an “every car for itself plan,” each doing its own thing while staying in contact. My car started at Kilauea Overlook, but found the view, while very close, was partially obscured behind the caldera rim. So we quickly doubled back to the Wahinekapu Steaming Bluff (steam vents), for the best combination of direct view to the fountaining vents, and fast access. There we reconnected with most of the rest of the group.
The view to the fountaining vents from the Wahinekapu is about 2 miles—our other option was the closer vantage point at Keanakako’i Overlook, on the other side of the caldera (where I shot the 2023 eruption). This is about 1.25 miles from the fountains, but also required a 15 minute drive followed by a 1 mile walk, and I knew that even if we found parking there (far from a sure thing), it would probably be starting to get light by the time we got our eyes on the eruption. Plus, having shot the eruption from Wahinekapu already, I knew we’d be close enough that 400mm would be plenty long enough.
I’m so glad we took the path of least resistance and stayed at Wahinekapu. Even though my brother Jay (who was assisting me in this workshop) and I had a very small window to shoot before we needed to head back to Hilo to catch our flight home, the timing of the eruption and our arrival couldn’t have been better. We started with nearly an hour of complete darkness, allowing exposures that froze the fountains without blowing out the highlights (overexposing the lava) to create the virtually black background that I think makes the most dramatic lava images. Following the complete darkness, we photographed through the slow transition into a beautiful sunrise. Finally, as the day brightened, we enjoyed about a half hour of the eruption’s towering plume warmed by lava-light from below, and low sunlight from above. Absolutely spectacular.
When I first photographed lava in 2016, I was learning on the fly. At night, standard histogram rules don’t apply to lava because a properly exposed frame will be almost completely smashed agains the left side (with much cut off), and often, especially on wider shots, with just few small highlight blips on the far right. Basically, job-one is to make the lava as bright as possible without blowing it out. And job 1a is to do that using a shutter speed that freezes the lava’s motion (unless motion blur is your objective). And finally, you really should do this using the best (lowest) possible ISO.
The mistake people make for any kind of motion blur, and I’ve heard a lot of “best shutter speed for Kilauea’s lava fountains” advice, is to assume that there’s one ideal shutter speed for freezing the lava fountains. There isn’t. Just as with flowing water, the shutter speed that freezes a lava fountain is a function of several factors: the speed at which the lava is moving—the higher the fountain, the faster the lava will be moving when it reaches the ground, the distance to the fountain, and the focal length.
Back in 2016 I started with extremely high ISOs to maximize my shutter speed, but have gradually, through trial and error, dropped both my ISO and decreased my shutter speeds for my lava images. At night, since depth of field is usually no concern, for most of my long telephoto shots using my 100-400, I now just shoot wide open, at f/5.6 for that lens. My exposure trial and error process involves taking a shot at a certain focal length, verifying that the lava is close to maximum brightness without blowing out, then magnifying the image in my viewfinder (or LCD) to confirm that there’s no motion blur in the lava fountain (make sure you check the lowest lava blobs, as they’ll be moving fastest). If that works, I lower my ISO and increase my shutter speed further, until I find the threshold where blur is discernible. Then, for a just-to-be-safe cushion, I bump my ISO and shutter speed back up to just slightly more than the prior settings (that I thought froze the lava).
I had to do this for every significant change in focal length, but it wasn’t long before I became pretty comfortable with my settings. And by the time this Friday morning lava fountaining started—having done it in 2016, 2022, 2023, and earlier that week—I was feeling so comfortable with my exposure settings that it was no longer a distraction. In fact, I was varying my focal length so frequently and clicking so fast, to simplify the process I just kept my exposure settings in the range I knew would work all the way out to 400mm. I was fine with this because a very satisfactory ISO 400 gave me a shutter speed in the 1/100 to 1/200 second range that I knew worked.
So bottom line? In total darkness, standing 2 miles away, at 400mm I was perfectly comfortable with f/5.6, ISO 400, and 1/100. But I hope you can see that my exposure settings probably won’t work for you if you’re much closer than 2 miles, and might be overkill if you’re farther away. In other words, I strongly encourage anyone who wants to photograph fountaining lava to apply my process, not my settings. (And there are many people with far more experience photographing lava than I have, so feel free to defer to them if their results confirm that they know what they’re talking about.)
This experience, the final shoot of my 2025 Hawaii Big Island workshop, wasn’t just the grand finale for this workshop, it was the grand finale of 15 years of Hawaii workshops. As I pare down my workshop schedule and ease (slowly) toward retirement, I decided a few months ago that this would be my final Hawaii workshop. Not because I don’t enjoy it (I do!), or because it no longer fills (it does!), but simply because I had better reasons to keep other workshops. Just as my final Grand Canyon raft trip was gifted with a beautiful, albeit less dramatic, crescent moon for our final sunrise, I can’t imagine a better Hawaii memory to go out on.
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Kilauea Memories (2010-2025)
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Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 1: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance…
Posted on September 24, 2025
River of Light, Kilauea Eruption, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 400
f/5.6
1/250 second
One out of a million…
One of the great motivators for a nature photographer is the potential for the unexpected. As much as I love planning my photo shoots, especially when things come together exactly as hoped, the euphoria of the unexpected feels like photography’s greatest reward.
Some natural phenomena can be predicted with surgical precision—events like a rising or setting sun or moon, a total solar eclipse, the moonbow that materializes every spring full moon at the base of Yosemite Falls, and the sunset light that colors Horsetail Fall in late February—with the only variable being whether or not the clouds will cooperate enough to allow us to view the show.
I love those reliable phenomena and have made my living scheduling photo workshops to share them with others. But I also have a few workshops scheduled around the hope of something spectacular—a high risk, high reward roll of the dice that can only be timed to provide the best chance of success. In this category I include the Iceland aurora workshops Don Smith and I do each year, my Grand Canyon monsoon workshops where we cross our fingers for lightning and rainbows, and my latest obsession, chasing supercells and tornadoes across the US and Canadian plains.
But let me submit a third category: those phenomena where there’s absolutely nothing strategic about the timing, and when it occurs, it feels like a gift from Heaven. I guess that could describe any random sunset, rainbow, or unexpected snowfall, but I’m thinking more about those one-out-of-a million phenomena that are so spectacular and rare, for many they’re a once in a lifetime event. Like an erupting volcano.
My personal volcano history
I’ve been visiting Hawaii’s Big Island every (non-Covid) September since 2010. Through 2017, the lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu on Kilauea’s summit bubbled away 24/7, allowing each of my workshop groups to view and photograph beneath the Milky Way. This was so reliable, I simply took lava’s nightly glow for granted. Until 2016 I never saw actually the lava itself, just its rising smoke and vapor plume during the day, and the lava’s orange radiance illuminating the caldera walls after dark. But in 2016 the lava lake rose to the top of Halemaʻumaʻu and overflowed onto the caldera floor, and my group and I were gifted with the rare opportunity to view bubbling, exploding lava. Then in 2017 everything was back to normal, and my group returned to photographing the glow (and me to taking the eruption for granted).
But in a frustrating exhibition of Mother Nature’s fickle whims, in 2018 she reminded me to never take her for granted, and completely shut off the summit eruption the week before my workshop. Of course there’s lots of other stuff to photograph on the Big Island (my favorite Hawaiian island), but it’s pretty hard to top a volcanic eruption.
Since 2018, Kilauea has been mostly quiet, with a handful of relatively minor eruptions each year, most measured in hours or days, arriving with very short notice, and vanishing just as suddenly. In other words, impossible to plan a workshop around, and rare enough to never be expected.
My groups got nothing from the volcano in 2018, 2019, and 2021 (2020 was lost to Covid). Then in 2022, my workshop group and I were fortunate enough to get a long distance view of an eruption and the Milky Way from a brand new location. And in 2023 we hit the jackpot when a very active eruption started the day before my workshop, and ended the day after. For that one, I got to photograph numerous small fountains and lava rivers across a wide area of the caldera floor three different times, and my group enjoyed the same show twice. Then in 2024, Kilauea was quiet again.
I knew that Kilauea’s eruption history meant that the next one could be tomorrow, or years away. Or never. But in December of 2024, a whole new kind of eruption started on Kilauea. Instead of smaller fountains spreading across the caldera as we’d seen in 2023, this one was limited to one or two massive fountains. And instead of the recent one-and-done eruptions that would last for days or (occasionally) weeks, this new eruption came in short and sweet bursts separated by days. The first few lasted longer, up to 8 days, but after a while this latest eruption established a fairly regular routine, coming every week or so and lasting less than a day.
The fountaining in some of these episodes exceeded 1000 feet (a height I struggled to imagine, despite the many pictures and videos shared online), with most reaching at least 300 feet—far higher than anything I’d seen before, including in 2023.
Finally, we get to this image
(That’s a lot of context for just one image, so thanks for sticking with me.)
Since I scheduled the 2025 Hawaii workshop in the summer of 2024, I added it with no expectations of photographing an eruption. I simply knew any eruption, while always possible, was quite unlikely. Of course Hawaii has plenty to photograph without an erupting volcano, but a person can dream….
When the current eruption started late last year, nothing in recent history gave hope that it would last long enough to still be going by the time my workshop came around. With 10 months to go, my hope meter stayed pegged on zero. But as the volcano settled into its once-a-week routine and the months clicked past with little change in that pattern, I started to notice a slight quiver in the meter’s needle.
But as we all know, Mother Nature toys with hope. No sooner had my meter shown signs of life, the reliable one-week span between eruptions started stretching out to 10-14 days, the episode duration dropped to less than 12 hours, and the fountain heights dropped well below 500 feet. By the time episode 32 came and went in early September, I was down to hoping my workshop group would be lucky enough that the 12-hour or less span of the next episode (if there was a next episode), would fall sometime in the workshop’s 4 1/2 days. Not great odds, but to be safe, a few weeks before the workshop I e-mailed my group explaining our poor odds, but also reassuring them that if any eruption did happen during the workshop, we’d drop all other plans and I’d do everything in my power get us up to Kilauea to view it, regardless of the hour.
But in the secret recesses of my mind, despite my overwhelming desire to see and share this unprecedented sight, the possibility (no matter how small) that I might be responsible for navigating a dozen photographers and 3 vehicles through the mayhem reported to accompany every prior episode—gridlock and hours just getting into the park, no parking once we get in, and limited viewing space—was daunting at best. Combine that with the fact that I obsess about getting my eyes on a scene before guiding a group to it—not only did I not have any experience with the best viewing locations for this eruption (each eruption happens at a different location in or near the crater), if it did happen during the workshop, I’d be learning on the fly, with my group depending on me.
I did as much research and preparation as possible from 2600 miles away, scouring the internet, reaching out to others I knew who had viewed prior episodes, and practically memorizing the viewing instructions on the NPS Hawaii Volcanoes website. But I knew all this planning would be of little use if we made the 45 minute drive from our Hilo hotel to the park and found it teeming with double-parked photographers and gawking tourists.
Then, just a few days before the workshop, the USGS posted an eruption forecast stating that the earliest the next episode would start would be September 19, and possibly later if summit inflation (the amount of magma in the subterranean chamber) decreases. Since my workshop wraps up following the sunrise shoot on September 19, I knew we’d almost certainly miss it. A disappointment for sure, but also a significant stress reliever.
On my pre-workshop scouting visit, I learned that the vent of the eruption had been glowing the last couple of nights, a sign that the magma chamber was filling. With that information I realized there might be an opportunity to give my group a caldera night shoot for the first time since 2017. Not only that, as I scouted the views to the current eruption vents, I realized that I’d be able to align the caldera’s glow with the Milky Way, just like the olden days. Even without an eruption, things were looking up.
On Tuesday, our second night, I took the group to the caldera for sunset, and we stayed for a magnificent Milky Way shoot beneath a spectacularly (and unusually) clear sky. In fact, unlike all the prior Kilauea Milky Way shoots, where we just photographed a glowing hole at the bottom of a featureless caldera floor, subsequent eruptions (and especially the current one) had raised the caldera floor from 100 to 300+ feet, and replaced the dull rocks and shrubs with brand new beautifully textured lava. And the glow now emanated from a discernible volcanic cone that at times during our shoot emitted visible splashes of lava.
I went to bed that night overjoyed to have given my group an actual active volcano experience. And then I woke Wednesday morning. Checking the USGS Kilauea status update, I did a double-take. The earlier September 19 – 23 episode 33 forecast had been revised to indicate that an eruption was imminent, and could start any time from September 17 (today!) to 19. Whoa.
Along with the euphoria that we might indeed get to witness an actual fountaining eruption came the prior anxiety of not knowing exactly how I’d navigate it. So I devised a plan. Knowing that we’d all been up to the volcano the prior day, I decided that if the eruption does start, we’d drop everything and immediately beeline to Kilauea as a group, in no more than 3 vehicles (there were 14 of us, including me and my brother Jay). Once there, we’d do our best to stay together, but if it was too crowded and unmanageable, each car would have full autonomy to go where its occupants wanted to go, and to stay as long as they wanted. If that happened, we’d still keep in constant contact via our workshop WhatsApp group (which we’d already been using all week), and share any insights we learned about parking or vantage points. With a plan in place, we went about the day’s workshop plans (Akaka Falls and Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden), keeping a constant eye on the USGS eruption webcams and status updates.
Nothing had happened by the end of the day, so before sending everyone off for the evening, I checked to see who wanted to be awakened if the eruption started overnight, and found that all but three were up for an overnight adventure.
At 11:30 p.m. I’d already been asleep for a couple of hours when my phone started lighting up with notifications that the eruption had started. We were awake, dressed, and on the road in 15 minutes. By 12:15 a.m. (Thursday morning) we in place at the caldera and clicking madly.
What we saw this evening was not the promised fountaining, but no one was disappointed by the bubbling vent, lava falls, and lava river we did see. The splashes this night reached up to 50 feet, and our vantage point at the Steam Vents gave us a perfect view straight to all the action. We stayed to photograph it until 3:00 a.m., and drove back to the hotel completely euphoric. Needless to say, we passed on the sunrise shoot.
Stay tuned for Part Two…
Unplanned Beauty
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A Different Kind of Thrilling
Posted on September 6, 2025
Quiet Dawn, Aoraki and Lake Pukaki, New Zealand
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
30 second
F/18
ISO 50
Chasing tornadoes is undeniably thrilling, but photographers don’t live by thrills alone. Or maybe a better way to put that would be, thrills don’t necessarily need to set your heart racing. Because after nearly 2 weeks chasing supercells and their (thrilling) progeny, I was only home for a couple of days before jetting off to New Zealand for a completely different kind of thrills. Instead of action-packed targets like lightning, tornadoes, and the supercells themselves, our New Zealand thrills skew more toward soothing.
On any photo trip, whether it’s a workshop or personal, I like to balance the essential popular photo spots with a variety of less known, personal-discovery sites. For our New Zealand workshops, over the years Don Smith and I have assembled a nice variety of these spots to mix in with the Wanaka willows, Doubtful Sounds, and Tasman Lakes that justifiably attract the beauty-loving masses.
In New Zealand, and elsewhere, Don and I have learned that popularity doesn’t necessarily mean superiority, and some of our off the beaten path photo spots can be at least as beautiful as their more popular counterparts. With the added bonus of complete solitude.
When we scout workshop locations, we always get our eyes on the popular spots for a better understanding of things like light, foreground options, light, and so on. But we spend much more time poking around the perimeter of these known locations, venturing off-road (or at least off main and paved roads), studying maps, querying locals, and simply exploring the terrain for potential vantage points that are easily overlooked. (This doesn’t make us special—most good photographers take a similar approach.)
Which is how we came across this sweet location on the shore of Lake Pukaki in New Zealand. Many years ago, Don and I were just driving along the lakeshore, scouting possible photo locations in the Aoraki/Cook area. And while this spot is off the main highway, I’d hardly label it “hidden.” But we’ve never seen another photographer there. When we first saw it, we instantly realized that it checked every box on our list that day: mountains, lake, and foreground features (plus access that won’t kill anyone in the group).
From the get-go, Don and I made this a regular workshop sunrise location. And over the years we’ve learned that, like many spots, it’s a little different with each visit: the lake level goes up and down (and with it the rocks that are visible), the snow line on the surrounding peaks changes, amount of churn on the water varies, and of course the sky is always doing something different. Not only that, making our way from the van to the water in the pre-sunrise dark, it’s easy to end up a couple hundred feet one direction or the other from where we were the previous year. But one thing remains unchanged: we’re always alone.
One of the most important features of this spot is the prominence of Aoraki (Mt. Cook). At over 12,000 feet, it’s New Zealand’s highest peak. Sometimes clouds obscure its summit, but this year’s group got to watch Aoraki’s striking outline slowly materialize against the brightening sky.
With the group settled in and happily clicking away, I set about searching for this year’s foreground rocks. One of the things that makes this such a great location is the shallowness of the water near the shore here, which allows a few rocks to jut above the surface, with many more clearly visible just below the surface. For my foreground, I always look for the protruding rocks, but also stay very aware of the surrounding submerged rocks. This year, with Aoraki so visible, I hunted until I found a V-shaped collection of nearby rocks that complemented the distant peak.
Because the lake was fairly choppy, I decided on a long exposure to smooth the water, which provided the added bonus of better revealing the submerged rocks. We were still about 20 minutes out from sunrise, so achieving a 30-second exposure without a neutral density filter was a simple matter of dropping to ISO 50 and stopping down to f/18. To compose, I positioned myself so the nearby rocks framed Aoraki. Then I dropped my tripod a little to shrink the gap between the rocks and the peak, but didn’t drop as low as I might otherwise have because the lake’s glacial turquoise is such a beautiful feature itself.
One unsung perk of these pre-sunrise long exposures is the waiting. Nothing is more soothing, and dare I say thrilling, than simply standing and basking in morning’s quiet calm while my camera collects the faint light. Sublime.
Join Don and Me in New Zealand
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Roads Less Traveled
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The Show Must Go On
Posted on August 13, 2025
Ablaze, Desert View Sunset, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
Sony 1.4x Teleconverter
ISO 100
f/9
1/1600 second
Greetings from Grand Canyon.
A big part of nature photography is anticipation and planning. And with planning comes expectations. Sadly, expectations often don’t live up to reality, so another big part of nature photography is how you handle the situations when expectations aren’t met.
To those people who preempt disappointment by simply avoiding expectations (after all, if you don’t have expectations, you can’t be disappointed) I say, what fun is that? Despite the risk of disappointment, I truly enjoy getting excited about upcoming trips—then just do my best to make the most of whatever situation has dashed my expectations.
When planning my workshops, I try to remember that it’s not just my own expectations on the line—big promises also means the potential for big disappointment. And few things ramp up expectations, both my own and my workshop students’, more than the possibility of photographing lightning at the Grand Canyon. Of course with or without lightning, Grand Canyon is special. But let’s be honest—the only reason I schedule this workshop in Grand Canyon’s most crowded month is because that’s the best time for lightning. And despite all the inherent beauty here, lightning is the prime reason most of my workshop students sign up. The number two reason? Probably the opportunity to visit the North Rim.
This year, the first threat to everyone’s expectations came in July, when Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim burned, forcing the closure of that side of the park. Though the North Rim doesn’t have the views to match the South Rim, I’ve always believed the rest of the North Rim experience exceeds the South Rim: fewer people, evergreen forest setting, and rustic Grand Canyon Lodge. Additionally, the North Rim has been the site of some of my groups’ most spectacular lightning successes. But rather than cancel the workshop because we lost our two North Rim nights, I just switched those lost nights to the South Rim, where I believed (crossed my fingers) that the overall experience could be just as good, only different: expectations reset.
Smoke can create havoc at Grand Canyon, but at the time the fire changed my plans, I fully expected that it would be extinguished when my workshop came around (a month later). I also consoled myself with the belief that the chances for lightning this year would be no different than any other year (extremely good). In other words, expectations were back on the rise.
But, as the workshop drew near, the fire actually exploded from fewer than 10,000 acres to its current 145,000 acres (and climbing), with the containment percentages barely budging each day (it’s currently only 44% contained). Worse still, as August approached, it started to become clear that this was not a good monsoon year in Northern Arizona. Expectations cratered.
The workshop’s first day dawned with no hope for lightning, and a canyon filled with smoke—not a great combo. But by this time, we were in “the show must go on” mode, and I was grateful to have a group that was happy to stay as positive as I was. At the orientation I laid out the scenario, and gave them a rundown of all the ways we could make the best of it. I reminded them that some of my favorite Grand Canyon images were only possible because the smoke subdued a brilliant sun, and I’ve seen the forecast turn from clear to thunderstorms with very little warning.
Making it out to the east-side views on our first shoot, we found the skies cloudless, and a fair amount of smoke. But the smoke could have been much worse, and was thin enough to permit at least a decent view into the nearby portions of the canyon, with outlines of the canyon’s internal ridges receding down the canyon to the west. Not the iconic red rock grandeur people expect at Grand Canyon, but quite photogenic for anyone with a telephoto lens and reasonable understanding of exposure.
The view that evening enabled me to reemphasize the point I’d made in the orientation: this would likely be a sunset where the sun, receding ridges, and a telephoto lens would take the day. Even with the smoke, careful exposure would be required to capture (in a single frame) enough canyon detail for silhouettes, without blowing out the sun.
That’s exactly the approach I took for this Desert View sunset image from that first evening. I started by setting up my 100-400 with a 1.4 teleconverter for the biggest sun possible, then composed a few sample frames while the sun was about 15 minutes from the horizon. This gave me enough time to anticipate the spot on the distant canyon rim where the sun would disappear, and to play with the possible compositions, finally arriving at this one at a little less than 500mm. Then I waited.
I held my breath a few minutes later when the sun disappeared into a layer of clouds, exhaling only when it reappeared shortly thereafter. As it dropped to within a sun’s-diameter of the horizon, I started clicking, keeping a close eye on my camera’s histogram and highlight alerts (“zebras”), while pushing the exposure to as bright as I could make it without losing color in the sun. To hedge my bets, I varied my exposure up and down by a couple of stops, my standard practice any time the sun is in my frame. (This allows me to use my large monitor at home to select the image with the best highlights/shadows balance.)
Honestly, the resulting images looked like crap on my LCD: the sun appeared too bright, while the canyon was virtually black. But I know my camera well enough to know that both highlights and shadows were within the recoverable range. Not only that, underexposing everything but the sun turned the clouds a fiery orange-red.
Processing this image was actually a piece of cake: I just pulled Lightroom’s Highlights slider all the way to the left, the Shadows slider all the way to the right, then adjusted the Exposure slider upward until everything felt right. Believe it or not, as soon as I finished those three moves, the sun and clouds looked pretty much like this (no special masking, blending, or color adjustment required)—I actually chose to desaturate the color a bit in Photoshop to make everything look more credible. Besides some moderate noise reduction in the darkest areas of the frame, this image required very little more than that. (Amazing how much simpler processing is when you nail the exposure.)
We’re now on workshop Day 3, and it turns out that initial shoot was our smokiest. Though we haven’t seen many clouds (yet), and have had lots of smoke in the distance, the canyon itself, as well as the sky above, has been sufficiently smoke-free to permit very clear views all the way down to the river, and brilliant sunstars (which require the brightest possible sun) at each sunrise/sunset shoot after that first one.
I’ve also found myself even more thrilled than I expected to be to have much more time on the South Rim—not only do we have two more days here, we also didn’t lose most of one day to the drive to the North Rim. That’s allowed me to take group to a few favorite locations that I’ve never had time to share with groups before. And I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve found very effective workarounds to the daunting South Rim crowds.
And as if to reward everyone’s positive spirit, now the National Weather Service has dangled hints of thunderstorms for tomorrow, and completely dropped the hints in favor of downright promises for the day following (fingers crossed). So things are definitely looking up.
Having lost the North Rim for the foreseeable future, I wasn’t sure I was going to continue this workshop. But after this week’s experience, even without the normal amount of lightning, all systems are go for next year.
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More Monsoon Magic
Storm Chasing Diary: Saving the Best For Last
Posted on July 27, 2025
Sunset Supercell Lightning, Amistad, New Mexico
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 50
f/18
1/4 second
I’ve really enjoyed sharing my storm chasing images and experiences with everyone here on my blog, but need to end this “Storm Chasing Diary” series so I can return to some the unprocessed images from other recent trips. So the “last” referred to in the title is the series, not the images, which will keep coming as time permits.
“Best” is a very subjective term. I can’t even decide for sure that this image is the best one I captured this day, but I’m going with it because at the very least, it was the most thrilling.
After finishing with the storm cell I wrote about in my previous blog—the one with the double rainbow split by a lightning bolt, I looked around, wondering where everyone had gone. A minute ago we were all-in on the rainbow, but now I was alone. No, they weren’t playing a trick on me, they were lined up on the road about 100 feet away, aiming their cameras the other direction, toward a storm that had organized into a massive supercell while I was off chasing rainbows.
Surveying that scene, I said aloud and to no one in particular, “Well, this looks interesting,” then ambled off to join them. Surely I wouldn’t be able to top what I’d just captured, so on the way I stopped to share my excitement over capturing a double rainbow with a lightning bolt with our trip leader, Chris Gullikson. As I prepared to pull up the image on the back of my camera, a lightning bolt like none I’d ever seen froze me. This electric monster stretched from the base of the new supercell’s anvil—a thunderstorm’s cap, where the convection ceases and the clouds spread horizontally—all the way to the ground, instantly infusing me with deeper understanding of why everyone was so focused on this new storm. (Not to mention a renewed sense of urgency.)
This lightning was on a completely different scale from the ones I’d just been photographing—certainly in intensity, but even more impressive (and unprecedented in my personal history) was its length. The storm’s anvil topped out over 50,000 feet above the ground, and though the anvil’s top wasn’t visible from down on the ground, the bolt I’d just seen must have spanned several vertical vertical miles before stabbing the ground only about a mile away.
I quickened my pace (okay, sprinted), found a slot in the group’s already established firing line, and hastily set up. Since my Lightning Trigger was already attached and ready to go, all I need to do was compose and re-meter. To this point, most of my supercell images had used a 12-24 or 16-35 lens—wide enough to include the entire structure. But both were back in the van and I didn’t want to take my eyes off the storm to go fetch them if I didn’t need to. So I twisted my 24-105 all the way out to 24mm, and found it was just wide enough to include all of the most important components of the scene: the wall cloud, the rain curtain and sun, plus a little of the road. Though the cell was moving pretty rapidly from right to left, I reasoned I could stick with the 24-105 as long as I monitored my composition and adjusted for the motion every minute or two. Then I crossed my fingers, hoping that my composition would reach high enough to include all of whatever lightning I saw.
With everything ready for the next lightning strike, I took the time to appreciate the view. Of course every supercell is spectacularly beautiful, but this one was made even more special by its proximity to the sun, which etched its glowing disk in the dense rain curtain, and infused the backlit the clouds with a rich, golden hue. Surely, I thought, adding a lightning bolt like the one I just saw to something already so beautiful would be too much to ask for.
Apparently not. While I’ve seen many storms dispense more lightning than this one, the emphasis here was clearly on quality over quantity. In the 30 or so minutes I photographed it, I captured 6 bolts of similar brilliance and length to that first one. The one I’m sharing here was not only the evening’s strongest, eliciting the most ooohs and ahhhs from the group, it was also the most perfectly positioned, making it an easy to choice to be the first to process. I eventually went back and processed a couple of others as vertical frames, partly to add variety, and partly because they were just too beautiful to let languish on a hard drive.
If you’d have told me before the storm chasing workshop that we’d have one day where we saw multiple tornadoes, but that our best day would be a day with zero tornadoes, I wouldn’t have believed you. But if someone held a gun to my head and told me to pick one “best” day of the storm chasing trip, I’d have to say (before disarming them and rendering them unconscious, of course) this day would be the one.
June 7, 2025, Near Amistad, New Mexico (processed so far)
It’s days like this one, as well as our nearly as memorable tornado day, that remind me why I am a nature photographer. The unpredictability of the natural world, combined with its absolute insistence on doing exactly what it wants to do, can make photographing it an extremely frustrating endeavor. But then we get rewards like this.
One other thing this whole storm chasing experience did for me was reinforce my message to people who tell me how lucky I am to live in California, where I have so much world class beauty right at my doorstep. And while I can’t disagree (or complain!), I remind them that California skies are generally quite boring. The atmospheric sights I witnessed were every bit as spectacular as any more permanent terrestrial feature I’ve witnessed. Which is why I’m jealous of anyone who lives somewhere that serves up skies like this from time-to-time. Fortunately, until I return, I have the bounty I collected on this trip, both processed and yet-to-be processed, to keep me happy. So while this may be the last of my “Storm Chasing Diary” series, it absolutely won’t be the end of new images from this trip.
I’m also excited to say that this experience so greatly exceeded my expectations in so many ways (far beyond the photography itself, believe it or not), that I’ve decided to continue doing (this thing that was supposed to be a one-off) on into the future. In fact, Jeremy Woodhouse and I have already scheduled a storm chasing workshop for next summer, and are in the planning stages for another one in 2027.
Join me on another storm chasing adventure next summer
The Joy of Lightning
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Storm Chasing Diary: Safety, Schmafety
Posted on June 29, 2025
Too Close, Somewhere in West Texas
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/2 second
It feels pretty weird writing about sweltering Texas June afternoons while, only a couple of weeks later, shivering through frigid New Zealand June mornings, but welcome to my world. We’ve had some gorgeous photography Down Under again this year, and while I’d love to be able to capture, process, and blog in something closer to real time, my workshop priorities just don’t permit that. So here I am in extraordinarily beautiful New Zealand, still thinking about storm chasing in the Midwest. (But I’m definitely not complaining about this life I’ve chosen.)
So anyway…
It seems like every time I post a lightning image, I get admonished by someone who insists that I’m too close, too foolish, or that I must have a death wish. And while I appreciate the concern about my wellbeing, (tongue in cheek title of this post notwithstanding) I really am not a careless person.
These unsolicited lectures seem to have been exacerbated by this year’s decision to chase storms in the Midwest. After fielding enough (ostensibly) well-intended scoldings, I’ve decided that some people just don’t understand the research and planning that goes into storm chasing, and the care taken to ensure the safety of all—safety really is a non-negotiable priority. And then there those people who, no matter how careful my planning and execution, simply can’t comprehend why someone else would do something they themselves wouldn’t dream of doing.
To the latter group, let me point out that risk management is part of virtually every human activity, from a trip to the store, to free-soloing El Capitan (I’ve actually done one of these things), and pretty much every other activity in between.
Before any act, on some level, conscious or unconscious, we decide whether the benefit justifies the risk. And as you might imagine, the individual calculus behind those choices is all over the map, because one person’s thrill is another person’s terror. Which is why I’m always amused when someone scolds me for doing something simply because they’d never do it.
Yes, pursuing a subject that might kill you—suddenly, violently, and in multiple ways—on the surface sounds pretty nuts. But people every day most of us get behind the wheel fully cognizant of the potential that some random event completely beyond our control, from a sudden mechanical failure to a clueless fellow driver, could injure or kill us without warning. And what about that steak you had for dinner last night? Did you know that more than 5000 American die from choking each year?
Alex Honnold, everyone’s poster-child for risk taking, talks about the difficulty people have distinguishing difference between risk and consequence. He asserts that most people focus too much on the consequence of failure (almost certain death for someone free-soloing), and not enough on its risk. He believes, and so far has proven, that his preparation, physical abilities, and experience, make free-soloing a very low risk endeavor.
Far-be-it from me to compare myself to Alex Honnold, but I will say that majority of people who storm chase (myself included) don’t just race willy-nilly into a violent storm—we do an immense amount of research, arm (or surround) ourselves with the necessary expertise and tools, and make informed decisions on where to be, when to be there, and how we’ll retreat when things don’t go exactly as expected. As a nature photographer, this kind knowledge and preparation enables me to satiate my passion for natural drama and beauty while minimizing the non-zero chance I’ll die doing it. But your results may vary.
Is throwing caution to the wind how I live every aspect of my life? Absolutely not—not even close. For example, living vicariously through climbers, I think free-soloing El Capitan sounds like a blast—but all the preparation, knowledge, and ropes in the world are nowhere near enough to compel me to try rock climbing, in any form. In fact, even the knowledge that simply standing still is enough to keep me completely safe on the rim of Horseshoe Bend (near Page, Arizona—all who have been there know what I’m talking about), couldn’t get me within three feet of that edge. But, as I said, your results may vary.
Back to storm chasing
The big three storm-chasing weather phenomena that can kill you are tornadoes, hail, and lightning. (Despite words to the contrary from self-appointed lightning experts) I have enough general understanding and firsthand experience with lightning to possess a pretty good sense for what’s safe and what’s too close. But a charging tornado? Not so much. Before the trip, all I knew about tornado safety was that the ever popular grizzly attack strategy—just be faster than the person you’re standing next to—doesn’t work for tornadoes. And hail? Just looking at pictures of cars and buildings pummeled by large hail was enough to give me pause, and to seriously wonder whether storm chasers need to don helmets.
Given these concerns, it didn’t take long to appreciate the advantage of a trip leader who is a meteorologist with more than 20 years’ experience chasing storms. Specifically, our leader Chris’s ability to read the storms well enough to not only identify the best burgeoning supercell to target, but also to put us in the safest place to photograph whatever our chosen storm delivered, and when it’s time to exit, paid off time and time again.
From Chris, I learned (and later confirmed through my own observation) that tornadoes tend to form in very a specific region of a supercell, and only after tipping their hand with visible tells. Before dispensing a tornado, supercell starts visibly rotating, then drops a “wall cloud” down to ground level. On the day we saw a half-dozen or so tornadoes, Chris called each in advance, actually pointing out just where they’d drop.
And once on the ground, tornadoes tend to follow a predictable (to those who can read supercells) path. So even though we were within a mile of several tornadoes that day, we were able to safely observe them moving across our line of sight, and never felt the slightest anxiety.
Large hail was another danger novelty for this California boy. After seeing photos and hearing stories graphically depicting an assault by baseball-sized (and larger) frozen projectiles, I had no desire to experience large hail firsthand. But, since (as I know now) large hail tends to fall in certain regions of a storm that can be seen from a great distance, and you can actually hear hail coming, we were always able to avoid dangerous hail.
Lightning, on the other hand, still made me nervous. Turns out our experienced, storm-chasing meteorologist was perfectly comfortable defying all the lightning rules I’ve applied during my Grand Canyon monsoon storm chasing trips (where lightning is our prime target). Wide open spaces? Sure, whatever provides the best view. Nearly simultaneous lightning/thunder? Keep shooting!
I eventually asked Chris if he has some kind of secret lightning-whisperer insight that enables him to get so close to lightning. And though his answer wasn’t exactly comforting (“No.”), he did share that his lightning strategy is founded on more than 20 years of consequence-free exposure to supercell lightning.
Too close for comfort (but I’d do it again)
By the time we were on our tenth day of chasing, I’d come to terms with our cozy relationship with lightning, and certainly couldn’t argue with the results: lots of great lightning captures, and no storm chasers lost. Win/win.
But we weren’t out of the woods yet. Day 10 day found us motoring from the Texas Panhandle into eastern New Mexico, and finally down to southwest Texas, not far (as the crow flies) from Big Bend National Park. The day’s highlight was chasing a beautiful supercell across the Texas badlands in typical (by now) stop/start fashion, tracking the blue hail core, monitoring visible rotation for a possible tornado, and grabbing occasional lightning strikes.
At one point, the limited road network out there forced us to “punch through” the core of the storm, where we endured about 30 minutes of torrential downpour, drifting small (-ish) hail that deposited up to two inches of white, grape-size pellets on the road, and a barrage of frequently close lightning. After reaching the other side, several times we found ourselves far enough out front to stop and photograph the storm’s advance for a few minutes before retreating.
At our final stop, we had enough time to break out the tripods—a real luxury. The closest lightning was no more than a mile or two away as I took up position along a fence and set up my tripod, camera, and Lightning Trigger. Though the foreground here wasn’t great (understatement), the blue of the hail core was clearly visible, and a howling wind continuously pushed spectacular clouds rapidly across the scene, each one armed with an arsenal of ground-stabbing lightning.
After composing and metering, I just stood back and let my Lightning Trigger do all the work, and enjoyed the show. Occasionally, I’d adjust my framing as I became more aware of where the most lightning was firing. As the intensifying blue of the hail core signaled the storm’s approach, I could that the lightning was advancing with it. About the time I started getting a little nervous, Chris called us all back to the vans, but just as I reached for my camera to pack it up, the most spectacular, and closest, strike fired and the thunder exploded almost immediate my camera’s final click of the day.
I made it to the van before the next bolt landed, and we were soon down the road safely ahead of the hail. Had we been too close? Possibly. But as much as we’d grown to trust Chris, who had been right every time leading up to this shoot, we all hung in there. Seasoned storm chasing veterans by now, every single one of us was well aware of the risks, and each made the conscious choice to stay out and keep shooting rather than return retreat to safety as the lightning approached.
I always wear a seatbelt in a car, a helmet when I bike, and wait for the WALK sign. And you’ll never find me clinging to the side of El Capitan, or even standing on the edge at Horseshoe Bend (my Horseshoe bend pictures require a tall tripod and 3-foot remote cable to keep me a comfortable distance from the edge). But I’d do this storm chasing thing again in a heartbeat—even if that heartbeat might be my last.
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Storm Chasing Diary: “Large Cloud in the Sky”
Posted on June 18, 2025
Alien Spaceship, Supercell Near Amistad, New Mexico
Sony α1
Sony 12-24 GM
1/25 seconds
F/9
ISO 100
Because I was traveling and had unreliable connectivity, I started writing this blog in Microsoft Word rather than use the WordPress interface. When I inserted the post’s image at the top of the document, Microsoft’s unsolicited AI description simply said, “Large cloud in the sky.” And while no truer words were ever written, I think a little more context might prove enlightening. So here goes…
You’d think that someone who spends as much time photographing Nature as I do, would at some point cease being surprised by it. I’m here today to disabuse you of that notion.
My primary reason for arranging a Midwest storm chasing trip was to see and photograph a tornado. I simply knew that nothing would be able to top that experience. But just several hours into the trip, I was introduced to my first supercell, literally one of the most beautiful natural sights I’ve ever witnessed. Okay—clearly these trips aren’t just about the tornadoes.
Then, on the third day, after (finally) checking the tornado box (several times), I figured everything after that would be gravy. Wrong again. Because even though we saw no more tornadoes, the magic had only just begun.
While gawking at that day-1 supercell, I distinctly remember telling myself to take a breath and appreciate was I was looking at because I might not see anything this beautiful for the rest of my life. That prediction survived all the way until day-6.
If nothing else, this trip taught me that a supercell is so much more than a very large thunderstorm, it’s a living, breathing entity with a personality and a distinctive lifespan that runs from adolescence to maturity, before inevitably aging out. Achieving supercell status requires a specific combination of atmospheric conditions that cause a conventional cumulous cloud to ascend unchecked into the highest regions of Earth’s troposphere. More than that, a supercell is distinguished from a conventional towering thunderhead, and actually powered by, a rotating convective updraft: a mesocyclone. No mesocyclone, no supercell.
The key atmospheric ingredients necessary to create a mesocyclone are*:
- Atmospheric moisture (humidity): Moisture in the atmosphere provides the latent energy that sustains a thunderstorm’s updrafts.
- Unstable (buoyant) air: The warmer a “package” of air (picture a cube of air of any size), the more water vapor (moisture in gas form) it can hold. Air temperature is the measure of molecular energy; since air becomes less dense as it rises, it naturally cools because it has fewer molecules. Cooler air can hold less water vapor than warmer air, so a package of air that’s heated by the sun (the reason most thunderstorms form in the afternoon, when the sun is highest and warmest) rises and cools. Eventually the rising air cools to a temperature that can no longer hold its contained water vapor, forcing it to condense into liquid, and a cloud forms. Condensation creates heat, so as long as the condensation creates enough heat to keep the rising air warmer than the surrounding air, the updraft will continue.
- Wind shear: Wind shear is wind that travels in different directions at different elevations. When rising, unstable air encounters wind shear, it starts rotating. This rotation tilts the updrafts and downdrafts at the mesocyclone’s core, allowing them to persist independently, without interfering with each other.
* This is not me pretending to be an expert, this is me trying to learn something by researching and writing about it. (No AI was used, so any error is mine alone.)
The sensory manifestations of all the atmospheric machinations necessary to form a mesocyclone are truly (cliché alert) breathtaking: Massive, towering, symmetrical cloud layers; explosive (often seemingly ubiquitous) lightning, some of it intra-cloud, some of it cloud-to-ground (CTG), and its associated thunder; torrential rain (or no rain at all, depending on your position beneath the storm); vivid blue or blue-green regions in the clouds that reveal the supercell’s hail core; a distinct roar as the hail approaches; winds that range from nonexistent potentially hurricane force—airflow feeding the storm’s updraft rushes toward its center, while the storm’s downdraft “exhaust” flows away; rapidly rotating clouds at different elevations, sometimes, but not always, dropping to the ground in the form of a tornado. Experienced storm chasers (i.e., not me), read all of these features, combine combine their observations with the virtually realtime radar and atmospheric data provided by NOAA, and somehow determine the best location to safely view and photograph with storm-whisperer sagacity.
The story of this image
Basking in our day-4 tornado success, our day-5 chase brought another nice supercell and some lightning, but nothing that rivaled our prior sights (admittedly, our standards had been raised significantly). Shortly after noon on day-6, we departed our prior night’s hotel in Lubbock and motored northward through a collection of tiny Texas Panhandle “towns” (often not much more than a church, gas station, and cafe surrounded by a sprinkling of small houses). As with every other chase day, our tour director and meteorologist Chris Gullikson rode shotgun in the lead van, constantly monitoring the (rapidly improving) atmospheric conditions, giving us in the trailing van a play-by-play over the CB. Somewhere west of Amarillo, he identified our target storm and strategized a plan of attack.
In Dalhart, Texas we bent west, toward New Mexico. Chris’s CB updates to our trailing van became more frequent and excitement-tinged: “Tops at 52 (thousand feet)”; “3-inch hail marker”; “Tops at 55,” and so on. We’d learned early in the trip that clouds that stretched above 50,000 feet were especially promising—the higher the better. Similarly, we learned that the larger the hail (determined, it seems, by radar information), while a great indicator of an active supercell, also factored into our route choice—hail much larger than golf-ball-sized risks damaging the van, as well as any chaser who might be outside.
At this point in our tour, Chris’s late afternoon chase-declarations had become fairly routine, so while we were excited by a cell’s potential, we knew that data alone doesn’t ensure success. But soon we were in the thick of the storm, battling rain and hail, and dodging lightning to get in position. At one point we navigated hail that deposited a 2-inch layer on the road.
We’d get out front of the storm, pull the vans over, and everyone would pile out—if Chris’s first command was, “No tripods,” we knew this would be a quick stop—then hustle back when a sudden wind signaled the imminent arrival of rain or hail. Relatively close lightning became fairly routine, but at no point did I ever feel unsafe. (I asked Chris about this later, and learned that he has a pretty good idea of where in the storm the lightning will strike—but he did add that those estimations are far from certain.)
I knew we were on a pretty cool supercell, but had no idea what was in store until the lead van braked without the usual advance CB notice and Chris hustled everyone out with far more urgency that usual. He said, “We really don’t have time to stop here, but you just have to see this! No tripods!”
To this point, virtually every field we passed on this trip was completely fenced, forcing us to stop at the barbed wire just a few feet from the road, and often contend with drainage ditches and power lines in our foreground. But this time we found ourselves at an opening in the fence that allowed us to walk about 100 feet into the field, providing a clear view at the spectacle unfolding in the sky.
Even the experienced storm chasers, including Chris, admitted that this was one of the most magnificent supercells they’ve ever witnessed. But as if that wasn’t enough, the setting sun’s golden disk had burned through the low clouds on the horizon, sending shafts of sunlight skyward to illuminate the clouds’s underside.
With my 12-24 lens as wide as it would go (and still barely able to fit this massive beast), I had time to click 10 frames in fairly rapid succession before I a heard a faint roar coming from just down the road, in the direction from which we’d just come. The roar intensified and while I puzzled about what it could be, Chris yelled with the most urgency I’d heard all trip, “HAIL! Back in the vans now!” Everyone bolted for the opening in the fence, bottlenecking there as the first pellets pelted us. Supercell hail is nothing to mess with, and even these relatively small (grape-size) samples stung. Once through the fence, we loaded in record time and screeched away before the larger stuff reached us, everyone still in complete awe of the beauty we’d just witnessed.
You’d think that this beautiful supercell would be the (non-tornado) highlight of the trip, but it wasn’t even the highlight of the day. But that’s a story for another day…
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Storm Chasing Diary: My First Tornado
Posted on June 9, 2025
First Tornado, Lingo, New Mexico
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 200
f/16
1/40 second
Everyone remembers their first time. For me, the experience was as thrilling as I’d imagined, but only lasted about a minute. (I’m talking about my first tornado—what did you think I meant?)
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to see a tornado. Over the years this desire has intensified to the point where a tornado is quite probably my most frequent dream subject. When the NWS suggests just the slightest possibility of rotating thunderstorms in Northern California, I scan the skies and sometimes have even been known to hop in my car to go tornado hunting. (California averages one tornado per year.)
Gary’s Bucket List:
- See a tornado
Raft Grand CanyonRainbow over Yosemite ValleyNaked-eye cometNorthern Lights
Even though a tornado sighting has been number one on my list as all the items below it have fallen away, the opportunity has always eluded me. I suspect it has something to do with an approach based on simply waiting for the tornado to come to me—probably not a winning strategy in California. This year, I decided to change that.
On the recommendation of one of my frequent workshop students, I connected with Jeremy Woodhouse, a fellow photographer and photo workshop leader, who for the last several years has assembled storm chasing tours for photographers. Partnering with Tempest Tours out of Arlington, Texas, Jeremy has put his groups on the scene of some of the Midwest’s most extreme weather. I reached out to Jeremy and told him, if he assembled a storm chasing trip, I’d fill it, and a storm chasing collaboration was born.
In my previous post, I wrote about our first day and the incredible supercell we witnessed. No tornado, but no complaints. But still…
Day-two was quiet—a welcome respite after the initial day’s intensity and miles. We drove from Kansas, through Oklahoma, before finally settling down in Amarillo—without changing plans once. The highlight of that day was dinner at The Big Texan (home of the “free” 72 ounce steak)—trust me, you have to experience this place firsthand to appreciate it. Though there wasn’t much weather happening on day-two, the decision to be in Amarillo wasn’t random—it was to position ourselves for the next day’s chase, which looked far more promising.
In our day-three morning weather briefing (we start each day with a detailed discussion of the day’s weather from our tour-leader/meteorologist, Chris), we learned that the atmosphere was setting up beautifully for supercell development, not just that day, but also over the next three days (at least). We spent most of that afternoon bouncing around New Mexico and West Texas, where we saw lots of rain, hail, beautiful clouds, and (spectacular) lightning, but no tornado. We spent that night back in Amarillo.
Each day Chris identifies a general region to target, based on the morning’s forecast—not the general weather forecast we all get from our weather apps, websites, and TV weatherman, this is extremely detailed atmospheric data from NOAA, with technical analysis that can only be evaluated and subjectively interpreted by an expert. In the day-four briefing, Chris told us conditions were even better than the prior day’s. But despite the promising prospects, the rest of the morning unfolded with little sense of urgency. That’s because the big storms develop from mid-afternoon into the evening, so we generally don’t need to head out on a chase until late morning or early afternoon.
Once we do get on the road, there’s usually a lot of driving around, looping, and backtracking. While Jeremy drives the lead van, Chris rides shotgun and keeps a constant eye on his computer, phone, and ceiling-mounted real-time radar monitor. With every weather update, he further refines our target zone. I ride shotgun in the trailing van; in addition to answering whatever photo question might come up in our van, I provide an essential DJ service (classic rock, anyone?). Our two vans use CBs to stay in touch, and Chris frequently updates Tom, the driver of the trailing van and an experienced storm chaser himself, on all weather changes and other pertinent information.
Words cannot express how fast these supercells explode from a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm into a violent, roiling tower. So, in addition to interpreting weather data, experienced storm chasers must read, on the fly, dynamic features in these building cells (rotation, outflow and inflow, updrafts and downdrafts, to name a few) to determine the supercell’s next move. Once the cell’s direction of motion, speed, growth is established, Chris positions the group as close as possible to the action without subjecting everyone to the inevitable lightning and large hail, not to mention any tornado that might form. No small feat by itself, but factor in the swarm of other chasers seeking similar advantages, and it’s no wonder mayhem ensues whenever a supercell develops.
Once you establish which cell has the best potential to develop into a supercell, merely getting close is not enough. Each supercell has a mind of its own, a unique personality that seems to relish defying expectations. Some have the potential to drop tornadoes, while others might be better lightning producers, or possess spectacular (photogenic) structure (don’t forget your 12mm). Which of these traits you want to go for will determine where to set up to view and photograph.
Ideally we can get out in front of the storm and let it come to us, or better still, watch it move laterally across our view. But a couple of times we’ve had to “punch through the core,” an absolutely thrilling E-ticket ride that includes buckets of rain, punishing hail (and potentially car damaging or even life threatening), and a barrage of simultaneous lightning and thunder.
As you might imagine, the trip leader’s navigation skills are key (the rest of us just follow blindly), as is his ability to think quickly and decisively, and an ability to change plans mid-execution. Terrain is relatively flat in the rural areas we’ve concentrated on so far, with few trees, and lots of agriculture. The network of roads is pretty good, though many are rough and narrow, and often transition to dirt with little notice. Agriculture rules out here, but we also see a lot of livestock (no flying cows so far), and pass numerous oil rigs and wind turbines, vestiges of energy’s past and harbingers of energy’s future, often in very close proximity.
Despite possessing all the elements necessary to spark malevolent competition (crowds, passion, and urgency), the storm chasing community seems to be quite collegial. And despite the challenging roads, everyone seems work well together (creative parking skills help).
Even though the sky was completely overcast as we motored south from Amarillo toward Lubbock—not a good sign, as you need sun to kick-off the all important convection—this was apparently expected, and Chris seemed pretty excited by the atmospheric data he was seeing.
After a few feints and dodges, we ended up tracking south and east toward the most promising region near the Texas, New Mexico border. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who could interpret this cryptic atmospheric data, because it wasn’t long before we started encountering other chasers. Soon it felt like a storm chasing convention—they just kept coming.
By the time we reached ground-zero in eastern New Mexico, our target cell was well into adolescence and on its way to adulthood. We poked around its perimeter a bit, and at one point tried to get closer, then executed a hasty retreat when Chris (somehow) sensed the potential for damaging hail just down the road.
We were no longer on a casual drive, we were in full-on chase mode. We pivoted back the way we came and, looking for anything to put in the foreground of our images, returned to a field of hay bales we’d passed ten minutes earlier.
This gave us a great view of the developing wall cloud (lowering cumulus base from which a tornado usually forms) from a relatively safe distance (maybe a mile or so?). We were close enough to see that it was rotating, and Chris started shouting that a tornado could be imminent.
And then, there it was—a black funnel descending from the cloud base, stretching Earthward. Someone shouted, “It’s on the ground!”, and we were in business.
My first tornado. I just clicked like crazy, and even managed to catch a brief video with my iPhone. Within a minute or so, the funnel was already ascending back where it came from; it vanished shortly thereafter. This was not the last tornado we saw this day, nor was it the most impressive—not even close. But it was my first, and I’ll never forget it.
Gary’s Revised Bucket List:
See a tornadoRaft Grand CanyonRainbow over Yosemite ValleyNaked-eye cometNorthern Lights
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 