Watching the Warning by CoreyBlack
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Description
It's a steamy, hot summer afternoon (the ones where the air keeps threatening to turn into water.) The sky grows dark and ominous. The tv starts flashing, TORNADO WARNING.
Most sane people are looking for a place to hide; but never having been bothered by such trivialities as sanity, I grab my trusty Nikon Coolpix and head out into the fray. The wind blows and there's an intense smell of ozone that bespeaks impending rain. The lightening cracks, the thunder booms, and there's a palpable feeling of excitement and danger in the humid air. I start snapping away, grinning like an idiot and babbling things to myself like: "Jeez, will you look at these clouds?"
I had just made the picture above, when several nuclear-warhead-intensity lightening bolts went to ground about a block away and caused me to nearly ruin my pants. Needless to say, the two blocks back to my house seemed a lot farther than usual.
This picture was made on Kimball Avenue, in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, on August 23rd, 2007.
Comments (11)
Sue88
Beautiful photo! I love those dark blue colors. I'm glad that you made it back home safely. :)
hipps13
awesome capture
auntietk
Jeeze! What a sky! The light and the colors and the sheer volume of it is spectacular!
Chipka
I like a good sky, but of course the first thing I noticed was the little bitty airplane. Oh, how brave the pilots must be. I was nowhere near the storm center when this was taken, and it looks like I missed all of the excitement. I also thought to make a comment about the atmosphere of this shot, but then it struck me that it would be far too flimsy a pun, and so I refrained...but wow...this is impressive. The clouds rolling is amazingly caught, and it has that...well...that heavy weather look that the midwest does so well. You captured this perfectly.
anahata.c
sorry Chip didn't divulge the pun, now I'm guessing like mad! You gotta know, this is a great shot of a mad midwestern sky. People don't believe it till they come here. I mean they don't know what those skies look like. And what's amazing is, you caught it like it could've been a small shack in Iowa or the Kansas countryside—yet it's Albany Park, where my grandparents lived after leaving Russia. (Lot of Eastern Europeans there, in those days.) You got the sky, you got the ripples, you got the sense of a building top being the last beacon of sane shelter as hell descends; and those lone wires really make this feel lonely. Hard to believe there's a city around it. Love this shot, it's the midwest all the way, and why would a photographer be out in this? Because he's a photographer! The picture calls! Another fav.
MrsRatbag
Fantastic weather capture; I'd be out there too, soaking it all in...
durleybeachbum
What a shot! You are possibly a madman.
wingnut55
menacing !
elfin14doaks
LOL a kindred spirit did you see mine titled near the end of the storm??? The sirens were blaring, the winds were whipping chunks of hail falling from the sky, and I was on the second floor balcony taking pictures. Great shot.
elfin12u
As the significant other of a photographer, I've found that depends come in really handy in situations exactly like this. Not only can you save a pair of pants from ruination, but can enjoy that nice warm feeling without any forth coming embarrassment. The only thing I would change about them is perhaps the name, something more assured like "most certainly", or "for sure" Depends almost sounds a bit random, as it may or may not,..it depends. Sorry, got really carried away on that....Back to your pic. This is a really sort of unsettling shot. Being born and raised in the mid west, I'm fully aware that when the sky gets like this, something is about to hit the fan. Cheri would've been out too, trying to get something "cool", sometimes she does, sometimes not. It depends!!
elisheba
Wonderful, powerful capture: I always love it when nature gets angry to refresh us :)