6/17/2004: Beautiful storm
 

http://cellar.org/2004/beautifulstorm.jpg

Sometimes IotDs call out to be IotDs on the basis of beauty alone. A tremendous one via MSNBC.

I am a total weather buff and I find images like this one exceedingly spectacular.
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wow...that is...incredible.

Just....WOW.

I want one.


Sidhe

:thumb:

It looks like it wants to be a tornado. But damn, what a beautiful tornado, huh?


Sidhe

If I saw anything that looked like that, I'd either be headed for the basement, or firing up the transmitter to contact the mothership.

You have to be careful with lightning
 

We had more bad-ass thunderstorms move through Houston this morning. My dogs were terrified.

It let up around 9:00, so I went to work.

A couple of hours later, I see on the Houston Chonicle website that a woman was killed by lightning, less than a mile from my house.

Story here

There but for the grace of whatever I believe in...

I think I can honestly say that that is the best IOTD that I've ever seen here. Absolutely fabulous.

Also, how cool a desktop background would that be.

it looks almost too perfect. how reliable is msnbc as a source? could it have been enhanced? the clouds in the foreground seem a little too smooth.

wow ! it's so beautiful... i'd be really afraid if i was close to such a thing... but i don't know if wouldn't move because of fear or because of the beauty...

beautiful, although I have some of the same doubts about authenticity as lumberjim.

You'd need a very high rez version to be able to tell, that would be naturally fairly smooth and JPEG artifacting makes it impossible to even hazard a guess now.

Ha ha! Nice pic.

It's hard to say if its doctored or not, although when put through the photoshop mill the structure does look a little too clean (see the very precise swishes) (swishes is not the technical term):

bloody file type rule


edited again. oh forget it, I can't upload the image. Sulk.

The photographer was probably using a very long exposure time, maybe half a minute or something, in order to catch the lightning. The clouds nearest the camera were probably moving quickly, because of the high winds associated with a thunderstorm, and so their appearance would be a little smoother than we expect.

What a reasonable thing to say. I think you are right.

I've seen time lapse pictures of a rocky coastline with waves crashing on it. It looks dead calm, if not a little blurry.

This is truely amazing, thanks for posting this!

The photographer's name is Jim Reed, and according to his site, he specializes in "severe and unusual weather" photography (his work was the basis for some of the effects in "The Day After Tomorrow").

As for this being doctored, no way. Check out the rest of his stuff on his site , or do a search for "jim reed" on corbis.com.

He's obviously spent his career in the middle of some cool-a** storms.

Here is his portfolio:
http://www.jimreedphoto.com/jrpportfoliomain.htm

My oh my...what splendid photographs!!

Although, I would venture a guess that he used certain color filters during processing to enhance things, like sky color, etc.