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While I have many projects in the works – producing videos, writing a novel, helping a client publish a book – I’ve been shooting tons of photos recently. The subjects have ranged from a pinup to a sugar artist to a newspaper preview of Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival. But as always, I’m drawn to nature, especially weather. And when the weather doesn’t cooperate – I’m still waiting for a great nighttime lightning storm here – there are sea turtles!

I recently accompanied friends as they roamed the east central Florida beaches one evening looking for nesting sea turtles. Our target was the Floridana Beach area, north of Sebastian, a popular area for turtles. We saw perhaps ten that night, under the full moon – at least when it stopped raining. The shoot was incredibly challenging, as watchers are forbidden to use white light to see these protected creatures. A red light is OK, and one of my friends had one, but it was rarely used. So focusing was almost impossible. (Next time, I’ll bring a red light to assist with focus.)

Nonetheless, there was something magical and primal about these beautiful creatures emerging from the ocean to do what they’ve done for thousands of years, and I did my best to capture the experience. See more photos here.

Now that my Tornado Alley season is over, I long to photograph more Florida storms. I chased one on July 6 that produced a spectacular shelf cloud – a type of arcus cloud – with beautifully lit layers. See the photos here.

And send some lightning my way, won’t you?

It was a beautiful evening, with the full moon rising over the ocean and storms heading out to sea.  I set up the camera to shoot automatically while chatting with friends at one of their oceanfront condos (man, I’d love to have that perch for photography all the time!).  The bad thing about that is, when the rain started spitting again, I wasn’t there to wipe off the lens. So while I got a handful of cool shots with lightning, the ones with raindrops were pretty much unlovable. I did my best to repair them, but after a while, they start to look like Impressionist paintings. (Maybe that’s not all bad.)

All that said, the photo above was taken after I’d wiped off the lens. The contrast wasn’t high, as the bolt lit up the cloud/precipitation in the air, and the ocean was pretty dark, but I like the subtlety. Also, I wanted to post it here because the social media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, always make photos with this kind of subtle light look like crap. I realize the services are compressing them, but it still makes me a bit frustrated.

Want to see more storm photos from this year, including tornadoes? Check out the 2015 storm gallery – as always, a work in progress.