"Transient 2" by Dustin Farrell

After his previous film "Transient" (seen here), Dustin Farrell is back with a second installment of amazing views of super storms and lightning strikes. It's a bit awe-inspiring.

"Here is my second rendition of storm chasing with a Phantom Flex 4K. The best shots from two years of storm chasing jammed into 3.5 minutes.

Stats: 35K miles traveled, 30 terabytes of hard drive space, 300 hours editing/coloring, 3 speeding tickets

Technical info: The Phantom Flex4K is a camera that must be post triggered while shooting high speed. This works out well for capturing lightning because the camera is always recording and rewriting to internal ram. As soon as a bolt appears in my view finder I trigger the camera to save what has been stored in the ram. Shooting at high frame rates requires a lot of light. Therefore, I mostly used my Zeiss Otus 28, 55, and 85mm lenses wide open at f1.4."

http://dfvc.com/

"Transient" by Dustin Farrell

Filmed by Dustin Farrell, "Transient" is an arresting, slow motion study of lightning.

"'Transient' is a compilation of the best shots from my storm chasing adventures of summer 2017. Most of the lightning footage was captured in uncompressed raw at 1000 frames per second with our Phantom Flex4K. This summer I chased for over 30 days and traveled 20K miles. My respect and admiration for storm chasers became even stronger this year. This is one of the most difficult projects I have ever attempted in my career. On several occasions I found myself uncomfortable either mentally or physically. Chasing storms with a Phantom Flex4K is stressful even when things are going well. There were at least 10 days where I returned home with my tail between my legs and nothing to show after a ten hour chase and 500 miles. There were also a couple of days that I drove home with an ear to ear smile that lasted for hours. Most of the lightning was captured in my home state of Arizona. I also spent a week in the Great Plains chasing with Chad Cowan. It was during this time that I captured a time-lapse of the massive super-cell shown twice in Transient. For some reason that damn super-cell refused to spit out a proper bolt.

Lightning is like a snowflake. Every bolt is different. I learned that lightning varies greatly in speed. There are some incredible looking bolts that I captured that didn't make the cut because even at 1000fps they only lasted for one frame during playback. I also captured some lightning that appear computer generated it lasted so long on the screen."

http://dfvc.com/

A storm's coming...

"There’s this big storm that’s all around us and we’re in the middle of it so it’s calm but I can feel it, like it’s everywhere."
--Florence Welch

I've been saying this and people don't believe me. But it's coming.

"Last Light" by Colin Rich

Award-winning cinematographer and director Colin Rich, who created visuals for M83 (one of my favorite bands, previously here, here, and here) when they performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 2013, has released a beautiful new time-lapse film, "Last Light." The film features the track Holograms by M83 which is taken from their soundtrack to the film "You & The Night."

Colin Rich talks about his short film:

"'Last Light' is the story of Los Angeles bearing the brunt of a tempest and the clarity that comes after the storm.
See Los Angeles in rare form.
I spent the better part of two years trying to link together a continuity of weather and light, which proved to be by far the most challenging films I have done to date. For those of you who have lived in Los Angeles, you know that rain, for the most part, is few and far between. Fueled by recent storms, I was able to capture the city in a seldom seen light; torrential rain and dark stormy skies."

It's beautiful, Colin.

https://www.deer-dog.com/
http://ilovem83.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Dave Sandford

Dave Sandford is a sports photographer by trade but he has branched out into some startling nature photos.

He said on Bored Panda:
"Recently, I have felt drawn to the lakes that are virtually in the backyard of my hometown of London, Ont., Canada. Specifically, the awe-inspiring Great Lakes. Lake Erie, the 4th largest of the Great Lakes caught my attention for this photographic essay. I chose to focus on Erie at a time of year (mid-October through December) when the Great Lakes can act more like oceans than lakes. With warm sunny beach days behind us, it is some of Autumn’s dark, cold and windy days that transform the Great Lakes into wickedly wild and treacherous bodies of water.

Lake Erie is 388km in length and approximately 92km across. It is also the shallowest of the Great Lakes, with an average depth of 62’ and the maximum depth of 210’. Lake Erie’s name originates from a native tribe who called the lake “Erige” (“cat”) due to the unpredictable and at times dangerously violent nature. Because of the shallowness of the lake, conditions can change dramatically in just a matter of minutes, with fierce waves springing up unexpectedly. Lake Erie’s unpredictable and violent nature has laid claim to some 1800-8000 shipwrecks dating back to the 17th century, most of which have never been found.

Over the last 4 weeks for 2-3 days a week, sometimes 6 hours a day, I did the 45 min drive to Lake Erie. The images here were made using my Canon gear, 1Dx body, 400mm & 70-200mm lenses, protected from the elements by my Aquatech sport’s housing and sport’s shield gear. Shot during the month of November on the North shore of Lake Erie, about 500’-600’ off-shore from a small lakeside community called Port Stanley, Ontario. Daily temperatures ranging from -2 up to 14 degrees celsius, sustained wind speeds of 45-50km/ph, gusting 70-100+ km/ph, the average water temperature of 11 celsius, and wave heights reaching 25’. It is days like these that most people stay away from the lake… It’s days like these, when Erie comes alive, showing it’s true power. These are the days I can’t wait to get to the lake and create images!"

The crispness of his images makes the waves look as though they are made of sand or rock. Water looks grainy. Waves become mountains. And the spectre of death rises in the last photo to point a finger...

http://www.davesandfordphotos.com/