In August Jon had the opportunity to go on a landscape photography workshop at the Grand Canyon. As a wildlife photography he wasn’t too keen until he heard the primary purpose of the workshop was to photograph the monsoon storms, more particularly the lightning they produce. They are as wild, unpredictable and challenging as any wildlife, and like our favorite birds, they are big, slow and colorful .
It was a landscape tour because there are no guarantees we would see any lightning, and as the leader said, if we get skunked on the monsoons, we can always photograph the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world,. In places it is a mile deep, which hard to comprehend. You can get some idea of the scale by looking at this sightseeing helicopter that passed by us.
Of course our focus was not on the Canyon, as magnificent as it was, but on monsoon storms
because they had the potential for producing lightning.
A couple of weeks before the workshop 3 people were killed by lightning near the White House. That certainly got Jon’s attention and reminded him how dangerous lightening can be. His fears were somewhat alleviated that when he got the pretrip materials, the first goal for the workshop was to “Be Safe”. That was reinforced when we arrived for our orientation and our leader started by saying the first thing we are going to discuss is safety.
A key thing is to keep the lightning 8-10 miles from you. If it looks like is going to get closer, then it is time to pack up and head for shelter. Since the Grand Canyon is 8 miles wide at its narrowest, that gave us a very visual safety marker, (Of course did not ignore the information technology can provide, as we looked at a radar app constantly to verify our visual signals).
We had good luck, with monsoon storms 2 of the 3 nights we were there Whether it was one, two or multiple strikes, the lightning was impressive.
Sometimes it more impressively seemed to light up the whole sky.
When not shooting lightning, our fall back was the beautiful Canyon. Tough problem.
This was Jon’s third landscape photo trip, and will take care of that itch for a while. Our next trip will return us to our primary love, wildlife photography.