In September of 2025, my work is generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I'm being forced to shut down my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.
I've been hard at work behind the scenes this past week getting some new arrangements up and running for a long-needed e-commerce section of this site. I'm happy to say that aside from some design tweaking, this thing is finally online and working! A big thanks to Tom Mullins for helping me get up to speed on configuring OSCommerce for the store. I signed on with a well-respected Van De Graaff generator manufacturer to become an official dealer for them, as well as getting 30 of my most popular images into the shopping cart catalog. I also added a stock of matted prints (in limited quantities) that I have on hand.
You can access the new store here, or visit the sections directly at these links:
The biggest challenge with OsCommerce was stripping out enough of the CSS coding so that I could build a cross-browser compatible layout the way I want it (it's no secret that I hate CSS, that's a rant for another post). Now that I have that figured out, I can begin working on a better design for the store pages (what's on there now is fairly thrown-together). But that will come at a later date, as I have other higher-prioritized projects on my table now.
As for the weather - July is certainly not starting out to be another June 2008. We've got a nice stalled boundary over West Virginia now, but continuous, ironclad cloud cover and light precip is going to keep any instability far away from here. I don't see any lightning being within 100 miles of Charleston in the next 2 days, and there may be enough rain to get all of the fireworks in the area cancelled or postponed tonight. Looks like a July 4 that I'll be spending all day inside, the first to be like this for as long as I can remember. The last three seasons in a row, I was out chasing on the 4th. If the fireworks don't get hosed, I'll be attempting a Spring Hill Cemetery shoot tonight.
Web Site Design and Internet Marketing by CIS Internet
From Dan: Please Read
Please do not copy/upload this site's content to social media or other web sites. Those copies have been a critical problem for me, seriously harming this site and my photography/storm chasing operation by diverting traffic, viewers, engagement and income. "Credit" and "exposure" does not benefit this site or my operation, rather they threaten my ability to cover my operating expenses. Please read my full explanation for this notice here.
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To my regular readers, I offer my apologies for this heavy-handed notice, but unfortunately it has become necessary.
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