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8 Years Ago
This may well be the shot of a lifetime...we will see as my life progresses. I hope not! I've had some curiosity on the story of how it was taken, so I decided to put up a post. Click on it if you want to see it as it looks way better not in the preview window!
Well...the title makes it sound more exciting than it is! This is just the story of how my wife Jayme and I finally were able to get a photo of a tornado scene after chasing for 4 years.
It all started in 2011. It wasn't too long after I started really getting into landscape art photography, and HDR techniques. A storm came through our hometown, and a tornado warning went out. I was in position, and captured this photograph below. I was intrigued by the amount of detail I could pull out from the clouds, decided that day...I wanted to shoot a tornado scene, not just a tornado, but a tornado landscape. Looking back now its pretty poorly taken, and poorly processed, but those were my skills at the time.
Over the next 4 years we have been chasing, and chasing, and chasing. Getting a photo of a tornado is not all that difficult, getting close to a tornado is more difficult, but we were close to about 1 a year. But...getting close to a tornado with great clouds and light while being able to put it into a scene while not being rained on? Oh and couple that with the fact that most tornados are only on the ground for a few minutes? Yeah.....its hard! Tornadoes can move up to 80+ mph, most are closer to 35-50 MPH, so even getting a multi shot HDR off in dim thunderstorm lighting without everything blurring to a complete mess was going to be a challenge, but I wanted it....bad. So we kept at it.
Its not like we weren't having some luck. Below are some photographs, all taken while we were out trying to get a shot of a tornado. Thunderstorms, and the skies afterwards, are really pretty photogenic beasts. Still, the tornado shot we were after eluded us...time after time!
Saturday, May 9th, the National Weather Service was calling for a large tornado outbreak across central KS, where I live. Over the day, they backed off of it a bit, but still said tornadoes were likely, so we packed up, drove out, and waited for the storms to start building. The first one popped up south of Quinter Kansas, and it build much MUCH quicker than a normal storm does. We were about 20 miles from it, and took off after it not soon after it started building, and by the time we got to Quinter, there were 2 small tornadoes on the ground. One east, and one North of town. The storm was moving slowly (15mph) to the north, and we were south of it, so we headed after the North tornado. It was a beautiful wedge, but soon after getting out of town we were stuck behind a tornado tour minivan. That is one of those companies that takes people out who have never seen a tornado before to spot them for a fee. Needless to say, they were NOT in a hurry, and wouldn't get over so I could go around, so behind them I stayed. The tornado actually stayed on the ground for about 5 minutes while we moved closer, we were within a mile and they stopped, and luckily I was able to get around them and move up to some cattle to take a shot with cattle and a beautiful green pasture in the foreground, and the tornado in the backround. It would have been a great shot, however, as I was jumping out of the pickup, the tornado dissipated. SO CLOSE, I was so upset, if it wasn't for that van I thought.
That storm in question was actually weakening rather quickly according to radar, and focus was moving towards a storm about 15-20 miles away south of Grinnell KS, so....we pulled off the Quinter storm, and headed toward the Grinnell one. By the time we got behind the storm to being moving towards the tornadic area....we could already see it from afar from about 10 miles away. A dark....moody strong tornado on the ground. We pulled off the blacktop, and were met immediately with some poor muddy road conditions because we were behind a storm that had dropped a lot of rain. Needless to say...I went as fast as I could through the mud and things got a bit squirrly a few times. We were about 2 miles away, and pulled onto a road that was much better, and began moving directly behind the path of the tornado. About 1/2 mile down the road I saw the shack....and saw the clouds, and saw the tornado.....that was it! By that point the tornado had been on the ground for about 10 minutes, which is a long time, but it was still holding on strong. Jayme began filming, and we pulled up alongside the shack, stopped, I grabbed my camera and tripod and jumped the fence....sloshed through a huge mud pit, got my angle right, slammed down my tripod, composed, focused, and took a set of shots. I refocused to make sure I didn't miss (I use manual focus), and shot a 2nd set. The tornado was moving from L to R in the photo, so it was getting to where it would be behind the house, so I grabbed the camera and moved to the right side of the house to try another angle, about slipped and fell and about dropped my camera in the mud! Didn't though. Got framed, focused, and the tornado began to dissipate. It was over, that quick, in my estimation about 60 seconds after I had exited my pickup.
Video is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0w2I-W-04o
We continued to chase as it got dark and got a few more cool shots but nothing of note really, and then headed home.
I edited it, and posted it that night, by the next morning the thing was going nuts. I won't go into all the specifics of all the phone calls and virility of the photo on social media, but there are some who have called into question its authenticity, even though there is video. The cloud structure doesn't look right, or normal, for a tornado to be there of according to meteorologists....and I tend to agree. It wasn't a normal scene and it doesn't quite look like a classic spot for a tornado to be, maybe that attributed to its rapid weakening after....not sure. I will assert this is NOT a composite of 2 images, which is the most popular rumor. The structure of the clouds or scene also hasn't been altered in any meaningful way. However, this was meant to be an art photograph, not a photo journalistic one, and it was processed and edited to be dramatic, and colorful, and impactful. The most significant changes I made to the photo were to darken the clouds at the top, and to darken the debris cloud near the bottom of the tornado, and to remove and change slightly some things that I felt distracted the eye. I wanted people to FEEL what its like to be close in the midst of one of those beasts. Its eerie, a bit scary, awe inspiring, and wicked cool. The scene reminds a lot of people, including myself, of the Wizard of Oz, and when I finished I pulled back and said out loud, "that's Wicked", and I titled it without even really knowing.
The Landowners were the closest ones to the vantage point where I shot the photo from, the 3 people that were out watching all assert this is what they saw, this is what it looked like.
I will not show any of the original 6 images that were used to take this photo, owing to the fact that I want my art to be seen for what I meant it to be seen for, and really I don't have to prove anything to anybody. I think it sets a poor precedent where artists have to try to justify what they did to a scene. What a camera takes isn't any more true to what the scene actually looked like like to the eye than the artists vision. Anyone is welcome to believe what they want. I welcome dissenting opinions of the reality of the photo as well. Art has been argued about since the beginning, it will til the end. I am just extremely proud of this photo, and am happy people feel enough when they look at it to talk about it. As of this morning its my 2nd best selling photo of all time, less than 5 days after it was taken. I think it will unseat "The Harvest" soon enough....although it would be nice if the harvest would put up a fight.
This discussion is closed.
