These kinds of weddings are fun to shoot…quiet, peaceful. Simple. I love it. Jackie looked STUNNING and Jeremy’s shoes of course were killer. The dude knows and loves SHOES. Also…he kicked a few drunk people out of his own reception, which I have to say…was pretty friggin’ epic.

The band/DJ was the Scott Keo Band and at first we all thought it was actually Michael Buble up there. He rocked.

The day was made even more amazing by the stellar coordinators from Outstanding Occasions…Rachel Troyan and Danielle Goettl, plus the rest of their team. I truly love working with these guys…they just GET IT. Also my buddy Jeff Ambrose backed me up and he always slays it. He also ran the photobooth during the reception and got some killer shot you’ll see at the end of this.

Thank you especially to Jackie and Jeremy for trusting me with your day and being fab-tabulous clients. I wish you both the best of luck!

Love this one!!!

And here are a few highlights from the photobooth…two with yours truly

Me and and the girls from Outstanding Occasions!!!

Vendors:
Venue: Montelucia Resort
Band/DJ: Scott Keo Band
Florist: Table Tops, Etc
Officiant: Mike Kennedy
Invitations: Val Marie Paper
Wedding Stationary: Idieh Design
Ceremony Musicians: Ivan Harshman
Hair: Erin Fink
Makeup: Chantelle Burch
Cake: Let Them Eat Cake
Rentals: Event Rentals
Linens: La Tavola Fine Linen

No one is more amazed than I am at the way my timelapse of the Booker supercell took off. For me personally it was a huge moment to capture a storm like this. So I was crazy proud. But I had no idea it would be something that soooo many people would find utterly awesome and want to share it everywhere. Even over a week later it’s continuing to be shared on various blogs and websites, and still going strong. As of writing this it has almost equaled the number of Vimeo plays as the July 5th, 2011 Haboob video of mine that also went viral.

It’s been an insane ride once again. Thank you all for the love.

So of course I will be posting various views of the storm over the next few weeks since we observed it over the course of 30 minutes and WOW do storms like this change quickly. It’s simply unbelievable to watch how it evolved over the course of 24 minutes or so.

I love this one in particular. I chose to create a print out of this capture mainly because of how it looks like a tornado or something has appeared on the right side. I had a meteorologist email me and he believes this was actually a tornadic storm and while we couldn’t see a clear funnel, a tornado  touched the ground at some point.

Either way…it was mesmerizing and amazing to watch. The orange sky behind it was creating this spooky backlight. What I also loved…was not only did the clouds and rain and dirt all look hellish…the ground itself was a field of plowed (or cut down) corn stalks…it looked almost like a landscape from the end of the world.

More images to come from this storm…can’t wait to share them all!

This is a stitch done in Photoshop of 80 separate images shot with a Canon 50mm set at f/1.4. I was literally standing right in front of them. The first image I took only includes from her elbow up to just above her head. And then you just pan around shooting as much information as you can and getting as wide as you need to in order to make a nice, normal composed image.

But the beauty of a Brenizer shot like this is you get this incredibly blurred background that would be impossible with a single photo at this distance. Really dig the effect and may have to use it more!

An amazing time…so many fun moments, including a back scratcher gift that Jake gave to Cassie, which in turn became those little hands that KristenWiig used to do on SNL! Well, you’ll see it below.

Thanks to my friend Rachel Ann for helping me with this one, and also, if you want to hire an amazing band…Bounce Band…wow, they KILLED it at this wedding.

Vendors:
Dress – Destiny’s Bride
Venue – Arizona Biltmore
DJ – Bounce Band
Hair/Makeup – Artistry on Location/Heather Wilson/Amber Tillinghast
Cake/Caterer – Arizona Biltmore
Flowers – Fred’s Flowers
Wedding Coordinator – Carrie Bayless from Arizona Biltmore

Still prints of this storm for purchase can be found on my gallery.

Follow me on Instagram as well for storm photos and whatnot -> MikeOlbinski

It took four years but I finally got it. A rotating supercell. And not just a rotating supercell, but one with insane structure and amazing movement. I’ve been visiting the Central Plains since 2010. Usually it’s just for a day, or three, or two…but it took until the fourth attempt to actually find what I’d been looking for. And boy did we find it.

No, there was no tornado. But that’s not really what I was after. I’m from Arizona. We don’t get structure like this. Clouds that rotate and look like alien spacecraft hanging over the Earth.

We chased this storm from the wrong side (north) and it took us going through hail and torrential rains to burst through on the south side. And when we did…this monster cloud was hanging over Texas and rotating like something out of Close Encounters.

The timelapse was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II with a Rokinon 14mm 2.8 lens. It’s broken up into four parts. The first section ends because it started pouring on us. We should have been further south when we started filming but you never know how long these things will last, so I started the timelapse as soon as I could.

One thing to note early on in the first part is the way the rain is coming down on the right and actually being sucked back into the rotation. Amazing.

A few miles south is where part two picks up. And I didn’t realize how fast it was moving south, so part three is just me panning the camera to the left. During that third part you can see dust along the cornfield being pulled into the storm as well…part of the strong inflow. The final part is when the storm had started dying out and we shot lightning as it passed over us.

Between the third and fourth portions we drove through Booker, Texas where tornado sirens were going off…it was creepy as all heck. And intense.

I hope you enjoy this. Once thing I’ve learned about timelapsing is that I always wish it would be longer or wouldn’t end. I wish I had been south and been able to record this storm come at me for 45 minutes.

But I love it the way it is. I wasn’t ever certain I’d see structure like this even though it’s been such a goal of mine. But we did it.

And by we, I mean myself and my buddy Andy Hoeland, who knows his crap and got us into position so we could chase this storm. Without him along I don’t know if I get this timelapse.

Below is a still-capture from the timelapse that is being sold as a print on either metal or Fuji Pearl paper. Click on the image to go to the gallery. 

There are no words really to describe the moment we saw this storm. We (My buddy Andy Hoeland and I) had been driving through rain and hail, always on the wrong side when we finally make a gamble to just push south through the storm and get on the far side if we could. When we finally left the rain behind and had a clear look to our west…our jaws dropped. We stopped on top of a hill, got out of the car, set up the cameras and started recording this monster.

Seeing something like this has been a longtime goal of mine. This was my fourth year chasing in the plains and I’ve never come CLOSE to this kind of structure. Pictures don’t do it justice. This was with a 14mm lens. It seems like it’s far away and safe, but in reality it was crazy close and we were ready to bail at any moment.

When I finally had all the cameras going and sat back to just take it all in…tears filled my eyes. I yelled with joy at the top of my lungs, I gave Andy a big hug, thanking him for picking this spot almost a week before as our target location. We heard other chasers nearby hooting and hollering as well. It was a magnificent moment.

This image is actually about 20 minutes or so after our first stop. We never could stay long in one place because the rain was just to our right and bearing down. This was when the supercell started really spinning at the base and pulled up dirt from below.

I will never…in all my life…forget this day.

Different views of this thing, a timelapse and a lot more to come from our trip!

Here’s a sneak peek from their day. Lots more to come!

I’m headed out to the central plains next week to get some tornado chasing in before the monsoon season officially kicks off in just about 15 days. Super excited…it’s like waiting for Christmas!

It feels like it’s been awhile since I posted any kind of storm image, so here’s one from near Toltec Road last summer. Baked, cracked earth and a lone shrub…complete with your obligatory haboob rolling in from the left side of the image.

Actually seemed somewhat strange to get a dust storm in this area near Picacho Peak blowing to the southwest instead of towards Phoenix. They almost always roll up our way.

I timelapsed this at the same time, you can watch that here.

This time around is different though. Not only because I’m a photographer now and she’s having a baby, so of course 1 +1 = 2. But it’s the fact that we’re having a baby at all that’s the miracle in all of this. I wont go into the long story of infertility and all that, but our impending baby boy is a huge blessing and a monumental surprise. And Jina wanted to capture this moment in our lives because of what it all means to our not-so-little family.

So we ventured out a few weeks ago and took some photos. Also his name is going to be Asher and we can’t wait to meet him.