Tempest

A look at the skies in northern Illinois while storms and tornadoes battered the southern U.S. Spring is the time when the cold of winter is replaced by the warm of summer. It does not change peacefully, however.

Walk on by

Continuing with the theme of taking people's pictures while they're walking away from me. This is my wife, taken while out for a walk this past weekend. Curve of the path, shadow line and placement of the figure were all intentional. The footprint of a dude with a large foot and that of a horse are bonuses.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

The light at the end of the storm

Let me start with a disclaimer. I don't advocate that anyone go out looking for storms without a lot of advance preparation, a plan and a backup plan. In the case of the line of severe storms that rolled through northern Illinois last evening, I had been keeping tabs on reports from NOAA most of the day and keeping Accuweather's rolling radar map within a couple of mouse clicks. NOAA let me know that developing storms would likely follow a path along the top two tiers of counties in Illinois after afternoon surface heating added the final ingredient necessary for the formation of a mesoscale convective system (MCS) -- fancy weather talk for a really big storm. By 4:00, things were developing rapidly along the Iowa/Illinois border. By 5:00 my wife and I had wolfed down a quick dinner and were in the car.

The plan was to drive west while staying north of the storm, then dropping south to catch the back side where hopefully things would be quite picturesque (and safe). While driving, my wife monitored the radio for reports of storm locations as well as warnings from the National Weather Service that we subscribe to on our cell phone.

After some zigzagging west and south and skirting the edge of the storm, it became clear that the extreme amount of moisture in this system would obscure most of the cloud formations in the storm cells. Bummer. By this time, we were in Elburn, Illinois and a wall of rain was coming in from the west. We decided to punch through it on state route 38. We were treated to an amazing lightning show along the way. We emerged from the rain just east of Dekalb.



I set up a tripod and set about to capture some lightning. The best way I know to do that is to frame up an area of the sky that is pretty active, set the camera ISO as low as it will go, close the lens aperture all the way down and let the camera pick a (hopefully) long exposure time. I had gotten it down to about a one-second exposure, then just kept clicking away, hoping that lightning would strike while the shutter was open. Out of about a hundred shots, lightning showed up in about a dozen. The image above was the most extensive lightning bolt I was able to capture.



From there, it was a matter of capturing some of the incidental clouds to the system, then sticking around for the aftermath -- in this case, a sky full of mammatus clouds at sunset.







Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Storm story

My wife and I followed the progress of a storm system most of the day last Friday. OK, so I followed it. I just kept my wife updated throughout the day. I think she knew that if things got interesting that I might want to go out and meet the storm as it approached our area. The storm eventually cut a path across six states leaving flooding, downed trees and power outages in its wake.

We received a severe thunderstorm watch alert on my cell phone early in the day. From there I logged onto the NOAA weather site, which provides a daily forecast briefing that meteorologists across the country use as reference in preparing their forecasts. The briefing indicated that a large flying wedge of thunderstorms was sweeping its way across Iowa and heading to Illinois and points east. This storm was a surprise -- it had not previously shown up on any of NOAA's computer models.

A combination of strong convection within the system and high velocity winds aloft meant a pretty good show was on its way. The NOAA site hinted at the possibility of the existence of wind shears, which meant that all the ingredients were in place for the formation of supercells.

I hit Accuweather.com for their rolling radar pictures. Using their time stamps and a trusty old road atlas, I calculated the speed of the storm at about 60mph. Whoa. Nothing to do but keep an eye on the weather reports and wait for our uninvited guest to blow in.

Later that afternoon, when the system approached to within 60 miles of my home, I set out to meet it. My wife came along to monitor the radio and keep me out of trouble. The plan was to photograph the approaching storm, then skedaddle our way back home ahead of it. The whole thing was like one of those algebra story problems -- a severe storm with high winds and heavy rains is heading east at 55 mph. A Ford Escape with a crazy man inside is heading west at 50 mph. Where will the two meet?



We met just west of Illinois Route 47, a north-south road in western Kane County. As we got closer to the storm, the visual turned from a shapeless mass of dark gray to layers of churning clouds, including a rather impressive shelf cloud riding underneath the stack. Walls of rain hung from the snarling mass along the horizon like sheets on a clothesline. I turned onto a north-south road, located a red barn to frame against the sky, turned the car around so it pointed toward home, then hopped out into a corn field to get some images.



I've shot enough approaching storms to know when enough is enough. I called to my wife, who sat in the car with her window open (I presume to yell to me to get back in at the appropriate time), and let her know that when the lead clouds hit a certain point on the southern horizon, we would make our exit. That would be our cue to get out fast. The clouds didn't quite make it there before I could hear the slow sizzle of very large raindrops striking the leaves of corn on the opposite side of the field. Time to go. I ran back to the car and just got inside as the rain began to fall on us.

The rain eased, then stopped as we raced eastward, raising my confidence that we could outrun the storm if things worked out for us at a couple of stop lights along the way. At stop light number one, we found ourselves waiting for green behind a farmer on a small tractor hauling a trailer tank full of water. Either he hadn't heard or ignored the weather reports -- there was plenty of water about to be delivered today. Either way, he was about to learn a hard lesson. When the light turned, the tractor pulled out ahead of us at a painfully slow pace. A line of cars the opposite way prevented me from passing the tractor as the rain caught up with us. The tractor hinted at pulling off the road to let us pass, but then swerved back on as the farmer likely rejected the idea of becoming a sitting duck on the side of the road in favor of continuing as a crawling duck. Big raindrops began hitting the roof and windshield as we finally pulled around the slow moving tractor, leaving the farmer behind to deal with his fate.

About three miles from home, any hope of outrunning the system disappeared. A section of storm to the south had raced ahead of the mass behind us and closed in on us in a big wet sloppy hug. We slogged though pouring rain and howling winds the rest of the way, dodging fallen trash bins that littered our subdivision like so many casualties in the streets.

Little damage was sustained in our neck of the woods, although many other areas saw uprooted trees and a few are still waiting for power to return. More storms are in the forecast for the next several days.

I'll keep an eye on them.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Little bump on the prairie

A small glacial kame rises above the surrounding flatland at Moraine Hills State Park near McHenry, Illinois. A foggy morning helps to define the contours of the kame against the wooded backdrop -- I had been to the park several times and never really noticed this formation until this day.

Kames are formed by the flow of water through a narrow tunnel in a melting glacier. Dirt and debris form piles at the bottom of the glacier and are revealed as the glacier recedes. Kames can be the dominant feature in a post-glacial landscape.

So in this instance, it kame, it thawed, it conquered. Ba-dum.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Itza bird

And that's about all I know about it at this point. A kind of speckled-stripey-sparrowy-finchy looking thing. Spotted at Moraine Hills State Park, McHenry, Illinois.

Perhaps one of my more ornithologically persuaded friends can help with an ID.

Thanks in advance.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Mill

I have an adage that I follow when out taking pictures: If the sky is doing something interesting, find something to stick in front of it and shoot it.

The skies were getting turbulent out at the Goose Lake Prairie State Natural Area near Morris, Illinois this past weekend. The park includes the remains of farms that once sat productively on the wide expanse of land. This windmill was selected for the job of acting as foreground interest to stand against the stormy backdrop.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

On the prairie

An old fence post seems to play tug of war with the remains of a barbed wire fence while stormy clouds swirl overhead. Seen at Goose Lake Prairie State Natural Area, Morris, Illinois.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Bound

At some point in the distant past, it was important for this wire to encircle this post. It set apart something of value from the wider world around it; it marked the personal property of the person who tied this and other strands of wire across the countryside.

Not so anymore. The property is no longer, the post and wire relieved of their duties long ago. Rusting and rotting, protecting nothing.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #5

An autumn tree situated on a glacial kame, Glacial Park, Ringwood, Illinois.

When I was in art school, one way the instructors taught us how to make better choices regarding our illustrations was to force us to use a limited pallete of colors. It helped instill some discipline when confronted with hundreds of possible choices regarding color and prevented too much of a reliance on any one particular color in our work.

Every so often I try to limit my photographic options to break an over-reliance on a particular mode of operating. I pretty much live with a wide angle lens on my camera. During the visit to Glacial Park, I put a 55-200mm zoom on camera and forced myself to view the world through a tiny 200mm window. With all the possible views available at the park, I wanted to forego wide-angle shots in favor of detailed "pieces" that could convey the sense of the end of autumn and the onset of winter.

I think that for the most part, I succeeded.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #3

More photographs from Glacial Park, north of Ringwood in McHenry County, Illinois. If you're wondering why I placed the subject where I did in the frame, the answer is simple -- I didn't have much choice. A brisk, chilly wind tossed the seed head back and forth. Since I was using a telephoto lens, I had to chase the pods back and forth, snapping as I went and hoping for a good shot. As it turned out, this shot was the most sharply focused of the several that I took.



The second photo was much easier to accomplish. The wind was gusty, but not enough to move the fallen branches (thankfully). I took my time and composed the shot to juxtapose the diagonal lines of the fallen tree against the verticals of the foreground grass and background trees which continue to live while the dead tree returns to the earth to nourish future flora.

Photographs taken with white balance set to "Cloudy" to add warmth and color to the scenes. Levels adjustments and slight color saturation added in post processing. Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #2

"Great minds run in the same channel." Or is it "All fools think alike?" No matter. Over at Listing Through Life, Roger is posting photos from Glacial Park that were taken the same weekend that my wife and I visited. Rog shot up the place on Saturday, I ionized a memory card there on Sunday.

We took our photos in basically the same weather and lighting conditions -- overcast. Roger had the foresight to visit the place on a warmer day. I lost the feeling in my face about a third of the way through my visit.

What's interesting is the way we're approaching the photos -- pretty much the same things photographed in similar conditions. Roger decided to embrace the monochrome -- since the palette of November is limited to begin with, why not take it further by going black and white?



Me? I decided to try to wrest every bit of color out of the landscape that I could. I set my camera's white balance to "stun." No wait, that's my phaser. White balance was set to "Shady" to pump some warmth into the photos and take advantage of the amber backdrop of prairie grasses. And -- confession time -- I pumped some additional color into some of the photos via Photoshop. None of the photos posted thus far have been enhanced. I'll let you know when I post the color boosted pics.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Portrait of November #1

Over the weekend, my wife and I hiked a couple of the trails at Glacial Park, just north of Ringwood, Illinois, near the Wisconsin border. The area has been described as "biological eye candy" and I can see why. The park is a mixture of rolling kames, prairie, ponds, kettles, bogs and oak savannahs. Nippersink Creek meanders its way through the northern reaches of the park.

In early autumn the prairie grasses turn a burgundy color. By this November day, it had settled into an amber hue. Large flocks of cranes circled overhead.



I had recently decried my annual photographic funk that hits in November. If ever there was a cure, this was it. What emerged from the day is a composite portrait of the month of November. While on the surface, everything appears still and asleep, if you look long enough, you'll see signs that life continues. The juxtaposition of the end of life and the continuation of it is what makes November what it is, and is what I'll present here over the course of the next few days.

Stay tuned.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Signs of summer

Here in the Midwestern U.S., you can count on seeing seeing summer thunderstorms and fields of maturing corn. Sometimes you get to see them at the same time.

Storm clouds roil over a corn field, photographed just west of Elgin, Illinois on a tempestuous afternoon. Two HDR images from single RAW files -- one for the corn, one for the sky above it -- assembled in Photoshop.

I've got that going for me, which is good: I received an e-mail from Getty Images yesterday. They've selected ten more of my images for representation in their image library. Their selections include a couple of my recent lens-reversed, insect macro shots. Cool.

Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.

Summer prairie

What the entire state of Illinois used to look like.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.