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Saturday, June 27, 2015

Spring 2015 storm season epilogue

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and shut down my operation.

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.

Well, it's over. I had excellent spring seasons in 2012, 2013 and 2014, so I was due for a "down year". It happens to all storm chasers eventually. Spring 2015 was a pretty abysmal storm season for me in many ways. Most of the Plains setups were far, far out west and south, which meant I had to log many long miles for each storm chase day. I had a very costly camera loss. I struck out on catching any of the photogenic tornadoes this season produced. Lightning in the Midwest has been very uncooperative. As a result of all these things, I really have no signature 'catch' for the season in terms of video or still imagery.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been, so for that I'm thankful. You have to count your blessings. I saw three tornadoes, so I'm not ending the season with a zero in that regard - always a nice thing. I could afford to replace my lost camera, so that's a huge blessing to be grateful for. Even though I haven't bagged a 'catch of the year' in my opinion, the April 8 lightning in St. Louis provided at least a few nice additions to the gallery. And we've still got the summer and fall seasons to go.

Lightning over the Gateway Arch in St. Louis on April 8

Ultimately, any year when I can afford and am healthy enough to get out and chase at all is something to be thankful for - even if I do nothing but bust. So although this year has fallen into one of the lowest tiers of my career, I won't go away sulking.

Furthermore, seasons like this one are necessary to endure and pay for in order to have the good years. Not to get into another copyright rant, but the big successful images I capture have the cost of seasons like this one behind them. The cost of each successful image includes not only the chase in which I capture it, but all of the 'busts' leading up to it. I go through the costs and pain of these bad times in order to get the good ones. Another reason why it's so infuriating to have images and videos stolen!

Listed below are links to all of the chase accounts for the spring, both in the Great Plains and the Midwest. Each of these has links to video clips and photos. I finished catching up with chase accounts this weekend, so everything's there and up-to-date.