Photo/video authenticity statement and a description of photo edits
My photos and videos were shot on-location with my own equipment, and show real, authentic events as they happened. Many of my best photographs required numerous attempts over many years - at a great expense of time and money - to capture. For example:
St. Louis Gallery: It took ten years and more than 150 attempts to capture my first still photograph of a lightning strike to the Gateway Arch.
Chicago Skyscraper Lightning Gallery: It took 8 years and more than 20 trips into Chicago (first from West Virginia, later from St. Louis) to capture my first triple skyscraper lightning strike photograph.
New River Gorge Bridge Lightning Gallery: It took 5 years and more than 40 trips on curvy mountain roads from Charleston to Fayette Station, WV to capture my first photograph of a lightning strike behind the New River Gorge Bridge.
To date, my photo galleries represent 395,683 miles of travel over the past 32 years. I put in the work and the dedication required to capture these scenes in person as they happen.
There are four types of digital edits that have been performed to a select few images. These are always clearly labeled in the catalog with the following designations:
Wire Removal:  - Denotes an image where power lines across part of the image were digitally removed usuing manual brush tools and manual single-pixel-level touch-ups (no AI used). Example:
Lightning Stack: A digital composite image consisting of multiple frames taken during a period of time where the camera remained in the same position. On this site, this refers to images of individual lightning strikes during the same storm layered together into a single image, simulating a single long exposure. Stacks are denoted both with a label and an "ST" in the photo's catalog number. If you're interested, I wrote a blog post on lightning photo stacking and how it is done.
Tornado Panoramic Composite: These are manually-blended composite images showing the stages of development and maturation of a tornado side-by-side in a single image. Example:
Simple Panorama: These are comprised of a series of sequential panning photographs shot at the same time and place in rapid succession, stitched together using a tool to align and merge the individual frames into a single, seamless wide image. The process is similar to how modern cell phones shoot a panoramic photo. Example:
Artificial intelligence has never been (and never will be) used to create, enhance, edit or otherwise manipulate any of the images on this site.
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