From The Vault – 27 May 2001 – People Chaser Derecho Video!

Commentary adapted from the original SUMM.

The Meteorology behind the 24 August, 2011, SW Ontario Tornadic Event

Tags

2011 Weather

The 24 August, 2011 event shared both similarities and differences with the 21 August, 2011 event.

Both were tornadic, and both had similar synoptic scale upper-level patterns. Some of the differences included the mesoscale surface pattern and the reactions of the general public, both before, during and after the events.

This time we take a proper top-down look at the setup.

On the morning of the event there is again an approaching upper level jet max, rotating around a large, long wave trough:

At 250mb:

The Meteorology behind the 21 August, 2011, Goderich, ON Tornado

Tags

2011 Weather

Many of the public in Goderich were surprised by the occurrence of a Strong Tornado (i.e. F3 damage), stating they thought it was just another thunderstorm (as opposed to the reflection often given by the public in high-dewpoint events: “It felt like there was going to be a bad storm”).  Many chasers and meteorologists were also surprised with the evolution of events.

Environment Canada did a good job – a warning was out with about ten minutes lead time, which is sufficient for members of the public to take action and responsibility for their safety, if they received the warning.  EC also had a Severe Weather Watch out that did mention a tornado was possible – but did not have a Tornado Watch in effect.

This was a day where the possibility of a strong tornado was evident, if you looked in the right places.  If you looked in the wrong places you could be easily have missed it coming.

I, unfortunately had other things on my plate and did not look farther than SPC Tornado Probability guidance:

Concert Photography – Sir Paul…

Tags

Concert Photography

This was easily one of the top five concerts I have ever attened!  Jam packed Air Canada Centre was taken for one hell of a musical ride covering all of Paul’s mucial career, from Early Beatles through Wing classics to his current material.

I had seen Paul in 1994 and he was good, but the band he has had together since the early 2000′s takes this to a whole other plain.  Great passionate players that push Paul into playing his best and the sum of the parts is pure magic.

Click on each image for a larger view (when doen click anywhere outside the image to return to the blog).

As a guitarist I LOVE how Paul still uses his old iconic instruments – like his orginal Beatle bass!  Kicked off with Venus and Mars/Rock Show and then Jet:

Concert Photography – Bob Seger

Tags

Concert Photography

Concert Photography – Pat Travers

Tags

Concert Photography

Concert Photography – Jethro Tull

Tags

Concert Photography

Ian Anderson:

Unequivocally, Jethro Tull are one of my favourite bands  – and this 2007 show at the John Labatt Centre in London, Ontario was the first time I had an opportunity to photograph them.

2011 Weather – 5/10/2011 Anatomy of an even weaker Elevated Convective event!

Tags

2011 Weather

Wow, it’s May, and I feel compelled to talk about the weather! Go figure!!  Especially about events I have witnessed. In these days of hyper-extreme TV “StormChasers” bent on getting closer in/inside vorticies, as if ‘if your face’ is all that matters (sorry, its NOT), I am happy to take some pride in enjoying analyzing and writing up on a weak – but photogenic – convective event.

As with normal weekday life these days I arrived home situationally unaware.  Plus this was band rehearsal night. so there was no time to indulge in an array of weather data (and I am happy to report we nailed that night’s attempt at the full album version of The Doors’ “Light My Fire” – we have such a good keyboard player!). So shortly before I need to leave I hear…thunder! 

Got out to the Wx-Perch to observe VERY high based convection/precip to my NW.  Saw one CG pop out from the side edge of the precip core and got off a couple of wide angle images before leaving to practice. Here is an ultra-wide image of the storm (new feature – click on image for larger version) – the main precip core is roughly eleven miles to my NW:

2011 Weather – Anatomy of a Weak Hailstorm / GIF and GR Level 3 Image Workflow

Tags

2011 Weather

Had no chance to see any weather data at all through the day on Friday , so when I returned home I was situationally unaware.   I don’t like that, and especially in May, and especially when I hear thunder as soon as I walk in the door!  A quick dash to the window revealed a developing cell just to the west – the first for the new place and the WX-Perch (TM).

Had a quasi-conical, but scuddy non-rotating lowering just below a linear updraft base, so it was time to grab the camera!  By the time I got back the lowering was gone and I was treated to a nice sculpted vault behind the leading shelf cloud – so at least I did get a nice structure shot out of what was going to be a very fleeting ‘low-end’ (but pretty!) event.

3 April 2011 – Mammatus/Convective Snowburst/Thundewrsnow event at London, Ontario

Tags

2011 Weather

Interesting weather afternoon!! Shortly after 1930z (3:30 pm EDT) I noticed what looked like mamatus clouds to the W and SE of my location in W London, Ontario.  Grabbed the camera and started shooting.

Concert Photography – Skid Row

Tags

Concert Photography

From the Thursday of the 2008 Rock the Park Festival in Harris Park, downtown London, Ontaro. Skid row followed Metal Queen Lee Arron (pics to follow), and ahead of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and headliners Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas (pics to also follow for both).

Good performance, may have been hampered in that they did not have lead guitarist Dave Sabo (Keri Kelly filling in) and it was not the same as having original singer Sebasian Bach. Event is notable for a couple of consecutive images I took – the first capturing guitarist Scotti Hill in mid-head bang, with hair speed-blur suspended between weightlessness and the descending head bang.

Such an image has to be taken the proper milliseconds after the downward head-bang is initiated, taking into account shutter lag and certain other optical adjustments based on dewpoint and solar refractive factor… OK, I am BS-ing, it was just pure LUCK!!

The VERY next shot has vocalist Johnny Solinger acknowledging the shot I just got – “Dude, you got that one” (again BS-ing)

Though that was actually the next shot I took.  Lotsa fun!!! .

Concert Photography – Scorpions (with Cinderella)

Tags

Concert Photography

As part of Sarnia, Ontario’s Bayfest I picked up a general admin admission for the Scorpions and Cinderella. It was the Scorpions’ retirement tour (or so they say!), so I was pleased to finally see them live.  I have always thought they were one of the great melodic hard-rock bands!

General Weather Images – Sunset New Year’s Day 2011!

Tags

2011 Weather, General Weather Images

Captured this fleeting image of the 2011 New Year’s Day sunset at London, Ontario, with the setting sun illuminating the post-frontal altocumulus!

Hopefully a harbinger of many more weather image to come in 2011!

Taken with the 50D and 70-200 IS F4 with 1.4x extender: 257mm (411mm full frame equivalent), ISO 400, 1/50 second handheld.

No time to set up the remote shutter-release – a tripod-ed shot would produce a better image, but the IS allowed me to capture a decent image of the fleeting scene.

 

.

Wedding & Honeymoon: Lake Tahoe

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

The plan for the weekend was to just kick back, relax, and enjoy beautiful Lake Tahoe.  After the almost storm-chase intensity of seeing a good part of four major National Parks over the last five days we were looking forward to the down time.  Sit on the beach, sip wine, read! Lake Tahoe is at quite a high elevation – 6225 feet above sea level – and is fairly large: 12 miles by 22 miles. It is also quite deep at 1,645 feet! 

Wedding & Honeymoon: Yosemite National Park – Part III: More Icons & Tuolumne

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had done a fair bit of planning so that we could get the most out the limited time we had in each of the Parks. A great help for anyone interested in photographing, or even just visiting Yosemite, is “The Photographers Guide to Yosemite”, by Michael Frye, and is currently available at Amazon or at The Ansel Adams Gallery (which is located in Yosemite) for a reasonable price.  T

his book is so highly regarded that when it was out of stock for a while before the wedding it was selling in some places for twenty times the sticker price! It became available again (whew!) about a month before we left and got it through the Gallery at the normal price (and it turned out to be an autographed copy!)! The book suggests all sorts of ‘secret’, or at least ‘off the beaten track’, locations for photo ops that would otherwise go unnoticed.  We chose Cathedral Beach along the Merced River for a morning El Capitan study.

Michelle got very creative and decided to hang over a big log to get the camera right down to the water level to maximize the mirroring effect of the calm water!

Concert Photography – ZZ Top with Wide Mouth Mason

Tags

Concert Photography

Finally got to see ZZ Top indoors! 

Wedding & Honeymoon: Yosemite National Park – Part II: After Dark

Tags

Lens Talk, Wedding & Honeymoon

We kept the photography limited to the daytime on this trip, with only a couple of exceptions – the surprise after-dark photo ops on the patio at the Monterey Plaza Hotel, and this planned attempt at Astrophotography in Yosemite.

Wedding & Honeymoon: Yosemite National Park – Part I: The Icons

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

Yosemite is arguably one of the top three National Parks in the United States (with Yellowstone NP, which I spent four days at in 2006, and Glacier NP, as rivals) and can be considered one of the greatest natural wonders anywhere.

Wedding & Honeymoon: Kings Canyon National Park

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

Our schedule was tight as we were trying to see both Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in one day.   We chose to skip the General Grant Grove of Giant Sequoias (a case of just been there done that in Giant Forest) and head for the actual Canyon.

Venus and Mars (and Saturn) are Alright Tonight!

Tags

General Photography, Misc

All three planets in a ‘V’ shape (and pretty dern close to being an isosceles triangle!), with Venus the brightest at the bottom of the ‘V’, reddish Mars forming the upper-left part of the ‘V’ (just on the edge of a high cloud!), and Saturn as the upper-right part of the ‘V’:

γ Vir of the constellation Virgo is upper left of the image.

Taken on the 70-200 f4.0 IS at 98 mm (100 ISO for 20 seconds).  Its rare to have these planets all bunched up in about 8 degrees of sky!  And the Crescent Moon joins the party on Thursday night, just in time for the Perseid Meteor Shower!

Wedding & Honeymoon: Sequioa National Park

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

Started the day in Visalia, CA after the long drive the night before from DVNP.  Wow, California actually has freeways, and is, in some places, densely populated. Like Visalia – it actually has over a hundred thousand people! I jest, but that is how it kinda felt after seeing so much of ‘empty’ California, and then getting back to something even slightly urban. 

Concert Photography – Rush Time Machine Tour

Tags

Concert Photography

So we learned it might have ended up being only a night of tubas and accordion and sausage in Willowdale…

Concert Photography – Robert Cray Band

Tags

Concert Photography

One of the most emotive and toneful Blues Artists out there, Robert Cray put on a wonderful show at the 2007 London International Blues Fest!

He can get some of the best live Stratocaster sounds I have ever heard!  Highly recommended act.

Wedding & Honeymoon: DVNP – Part 3 – The Racetrack

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

This turned out to be a special day of sight seeing in Death Valley National Park – we were going to see The Racetrack!

Concert Photography – Taylor Swift

Tags

Concert Photography

Opening for Brad Paisley at the John Labatt Centre (actually in the third slot before Rodney Atkins who was on before Brad Paisley).  I hear her career has come along some since then!

Gotta give her credit for writing all her own material and seemingly handling the spotlight well, as opposed to some of the other current Pop stars!

Concert Photography – Cheap Trick

Tags

Concert Photography

Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick at the 2007 edition of Rock The Park in Harris Park, London, Ontario.

Cheap Trick puts on a set that is more goofy than serious – to the point that some could misinterpret their attitude as being aloof or caviler.  I think it is just them being them and they rock out in their individual style.  Covered off most of the hits and were were fun to watch.

Rick is playing an 1958 Gibson Explorer, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Rick is a legendary guitar collector with over 250 and claims to have owned over 2000 guitars.  He brings many of his vintage pieces on the road and plays a different guitar for each song.  I estimated he had well over a million dollars worth of guitars pass through his hands at this London show!

Wedding & Honeymoon: DVNP – Part 2 – Old Indians

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

… and and a few Harleys, etc. So after the first day exploring Death Valley National Park we checked in to the clean and basic motel-ish Furnace Creek Ranch (not the super expensive Furnace Creek Inn) which is 214 feet below sea level and actually situated in an oasis! 

Wedding & Honeymoon: Highway 46

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon

So it as time to make our way from the coast – Highway 46 east from Cambria:

Concert Photography – 21 February 2010 Jeff Beck & Eric Clapton

Tags

Concert Photography

Wow – what great luck to be able to see both these legends together (and it was my first time seeing either!)!  This was a short tour with dates in London, England, New Your City, Montreal and Toronto only!  I was very stoked to up in the 5th row at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto:

Wedding & Honeymoon: Pacific Coast Highway and Big Sur

Tags

Wedding & Honeymoon