Lightning chase in southwest Illinois: May 8, 2007
ABOVE: Lightning near Red Bud, Illinois.
RED BUD, IL - Tuesday, May 8 was more of a travel day than an storm chase day, covering the miles from Tulsa, Oklahoma back home to West Virginia. However, a small risk for thunderstorms was present from Oklahoma up through Missouri into Illinois and Indiana. Since I had planned to stop for the night in St. Louis, I decided I had time to try shooting whatever I came up on along the way.
I made it across the river right at sunset and stopped at a St. Louis Bread Company for dinner in O'Fallon, Illinois. Panera Bread/St. Louis Bread Company restaurants (both are one in the same) are nice places to eat during a chase, as they all have free high-speed wireless internet. I noticed a small cluster of storms about 50 miles due south of me, across the river in Missouri. The storms were not very strong, but they were producing lightning and moving due north toward me. I decided to head about 30 miles south near the town of Red Bud, and wait for the storms to move in after dark. This was my first time shooting lightning with my new Fuji S700 point-and-shoot digital camera, and I was looking forward to testing its capabilities. Needless to say, it did just fine. Here are a few shots on the manual 4-second exposure mode with a F3.6 aperture:
My work is, at this very moment you are reading this, generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I was forced to shut down the professional side of 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.
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From Dan: Please Read
To my regular readers, I offer my apologies for this heavy-handed notice. Unfortunately it has become necessary, so please bear with me!
Please don't 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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This chase was a routine television assignment in my role as a cameraman. As a result, many of these don't have a dedicated chase log.
This chase was only recorded in my mileage reports, no detailed log was written for it.
