Storm photography - part I

Hello guys! We are getting closer and closer to the beginning of a storm season in Europe - next week is going to be pretty warm in central Europe according to the numerical model guidance, so it seems to be a great time to share with you some of my best storm photos from previous season and talk about storm photography in general. So let's jump straight in! :)

(that's me standing in front of a severe thunderstorm I chased with my team in SW Poland on May 31, 2017)

2017 season was honestly the best season so far for me. I not only got four really severe storms (few of them were the most intense ones since 2009!), but I managed to photograph more storms, no matter how strong they were - I started photographing and timelapsing almost every convective cell that I could see. Therefore I collected large amount of quality photos - way larger than during previous seasons. This post is the part one in which I'm showing the photos of storms I captured during the first half of the season. The reason I'm dividing this post into 2 parts is because I have really a lot of photos to show and I don't want this post to be so big.

The first serious storm of 2017 occured on May 31st. There wasn't much going on in my city on that day, but we went on chase to Trzebnica, a city located about 50km of my city and we were right on track of a strong and quite photogenic thunderstorm:

About 20 minutes later we punched the core of this thunderstorm, experiencing torrencial rain and close lightning strikes.

The next interesting storm setup established on June 16. The environment wasn't as favorable as it was previously, but I knew from my own experience that such parameters can result in storms that won't be severe, but might be really photogenic, so when I saw a cluster of storms coming at me on a radar, I immediately went out of the city to photograph it. I took a timelapse shot that came out really nice, but I'll talk about timelapses later - now let me just show you the photos I took of this storm:

Few minutes after this shot the strong wind gust suddenly materialized and my camera fell over:

Next setup was way more favorable for some really nice thunderstorms than the previous one. It was one of the 4 big days of 2017 season - I saw 3 thunderstorms, each of them was beautiful and very photogenic. But let's start from the beginning. In the early afternoon I noticed storms developing nearby. They were weak and wasn't looking really beautiful, but knowing the potential the atmosphere had on this day, I decided to go to my viewpoint just in case those storms will strenghten and start developing some photogenic structures. When I arrived I noticed well defined asperitas clouds - these clouds are quite rare, I only seen a few of them in my live:

I was timelapsing them for quite a while when I noticed that one of the nearby storms came a bit closer and developed some interesting structure. I repositioned a bit to shoot it, but I took only a few photos before it started to rain:

I was worried the rain might become stronger soon, so I packed all my gear and went back home. Just when I arrived at home it stopped raining, so I quickly changed my wet clothes and went back to my viewpoint. I looked at the sky and I just couldn't believe my eyes! I saw probably the most incredible, the most textbook updraft column I've ever seen! It was a truly mesmerizing experience!

While shooting this scene I realized that a new storm is developing south of me and it might be coming my way. Unfortunately I had only one 32GB SD card which was almost full. I looked on the radar and realised I have some time until the storm will be close enough to shoot it, so I rushed to the closest electronic shop and bought extra cards. I took me less time than I expected, so I leisurely came back home, unboxed the cards, putted one of them in my camera and came back to my viewpoint. The storm was closing in so I decided to make a quick timelapse and... oh no! I forgot to install timelapse software on my new cards so I was unable to make any timelapse! I had to come back home and install it, so I missed the opportunity to shoot this storm. Fortunately the installation was really quick so immediately after the storm started to move away I rushed back on my viewpoint to shoot the backside of it. It was quite photogenic, especially with sporadic lightning strikes coming out of the cloud:

At the same time a new storm was closing in from southeast, making a amazing lightning show, allowing me to take one of the best lightning pictures I've ever taken:

OK, I think it's enough for today :) The photos I posted here are roughly the half of all my storm photos from 2017 - as I wrote earlier, I'm gonna publish the rest in the next post that I will probably make in next few days, so stay tuned! I also think of making another post dedicated specially to storm timelapse. Tell me would you like to see my storm timelapses. Or maybe you'd like to read some tips about storm photography & timelapse? Let me know in the comments! :)