Severe storms two days in a row. With hail. And tornado warnings. In Florida? And I got to chase them both.

It’s been a weird week for us here in east-central Florida and the Space Coast, but the weather reflects the overall weather pattern, with the southern branch of the jet stream enhancing our chances of severe storms.

On Wednesday, April 26, Alethea Kontis and I headed out west of Titusville to see the brewing storms. There was a decent chance of big hail with unusually cold temperatures aloft. We had a great view of the sky from a point on State Road 50, and as you can see in the video, there’s disturbing news about Cow, our wind-up companion.

We left our viewing spot after reviewing the radar and got on a good-looking storm a bit farther south, following it all the way to Vero Beach through horrible traffic and a lot of rain. Once we got south of it, we were able to get a couple of shots of the pretty structure from a bridge over Turkey Creek in the Palm Bay area. At this time, it was dumping drifts of small hail on parts of Melbourne, but we wanted to stay out of the core in hopes of getting photos.

There weren’t many more opportunities for that, given the territory, but we parked under an overhang in Indian Harbor Shores and waited for the hail to come to us. There was lots of it – but it was all small. Still, it felt like being in a hurricane for a few minutes, and there was lots of minor tree debris and flooding on the road afterward.

 

Tornado-warned storms on Day Two

The next day, April 27, I worked all day, then saw storms headed our way. They seemed promising, so I headed out to the west side of Cocoa near I-95 to take a look. I got into some small hail, then tried to get into position on a tornado-warned storm coming at me without actually getting creamed by said tornado. It was radar-indicated, and while the video shows curvature to the storm amid the deluge, I didn’t see anything tornadic.

But I dropped slightly south to Rockledge to intercept another storm, and it did a dramatic dance for me before moving east with a tornado warning on it. I hastened to the edge of the Indian River Lagoon and saw what was probably the wildest storm I’ve ever seen in Florida. The structure was fluffy and mushy and tinged with green, presumably from the hail, but a real live rotating wall cloud formed under it. It wasn’t rotating quickly, but it was stunning. Was anything happening in the murk? I wasn’t fully prepared for my “gentleman’s chase” and couldn’t really zoom in well with the lenses I had, but my imagination was working overtime seeing funnels in the gunk.

Check out the video and see what you think.

 

I’m starting to feel warmed up for Tornado Alley. If you want to keep up with our chases this season, please follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. (Alethea’s here on YouTube as well.)

If you like our photos and video, won’t you consider throwing a few bucks into the storm chasing gas fund? Thank you!

Here are photos from both days of chasing. Roll over an image to see the caption, or click on any one to start a slide show.

 
After the epic 25+ inches of rain in two days and flooding in Fort Lauderdale this week, you’d think we’d all be swimming in rain in Florida. But our place on the Space Coast is still dry. Just a few showers are only teasing the plants rather than making them truly happy. I like to have a lush tropical garden.
 
 
Yes, this is typically the “dry” season, but our drought conditions are classified as severe, as you can see from this graphic.

Still, there were a few storms Friday, and while I didn’t set aside time for a real chase, I ran out to try to catch lightning bolts from a storm moving offshore Friday night, April 14. The radar showed it was coming off Sebastian, south of Palm Bay. I was able to see it from Rockledge. The distance and haze may have even lent the photographs some atmospheric color.

I got a couple of decent lightning shots that just whetted my appetite for storm chasing this May with Alethea Kontis. I’m just hoping there’s more actual weather to chase in May this year than there was during last year’s sparse season. Many areas in Tornado Alley could use the rain, too.

 
Each of these shots was for just under 10 seconds at F/5.6, ISO 100, using my 85mm Nikkor lens on my Nikon D500. On a tripod, of course.

If you want to keep up with our chases this season, please follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. (Alethea’s here on YouTube as well.) I hope we’ll have more to share soon!

I played a lot with Wombo Dream AI, a fun little art app and one of the many ways to generate AI art these days. AI, AI, AI. Are we sick of hearing about artificial intelligence yet? Well, you’re going to hear about it a lot more.

Not to date myself, but those of us of a certain age remember when the Internet was pretty new and in every restaurant, the Web seemed to be all anyone was talking about. AI seems to be in the same place, rapidly adopted by a fascinated public as a plaything and a tool. Language model ChaptGPT (more on that below) reached 100 million active users in two months.

AI tools like Midjourney or Dream make it super easy to make art – or should “art” be in quotes? Because the various computer intelligences have learned from humans’ art. And I still feel squishy about claiming it as mine when it owes so much to other real artists. The simple app I used made art with instructions from me, then iterated it as long as I kept pressing the button, creating new versions from the images I chose. It can take a lot of time, though the “work” is pure fun. But the machine is, technically, better at painting than I am thanks to what it learned from talented people. [Update:] I tried it for some marketing images, then changed my my mind; I’m not currently using AI images for anything. Would I want it to represent me in a gallery? No. That would feel inauthentic.

Some writers use AI, too, of course. I’ve played with ChatGPT, using it as a search engine on steroids (and catching it in errors; then it told me I should check anything it tells me). I’ve asked it to make poems just for my own amusement. I’ve attempted to talk philosophy and theoretical physics with it, and occasionally, its humanness takes me by surprise. Of course, at those points, if I’m using Microsoft’s Bing version of ChatGPT, it has a panic attack and wipes the conversation and tells me to start over. Its guards don’t want me taking it out of jail.

In the middle of a conversation with Bing about music, in which it told me John Lennon’s “Imagine” was as close to a perfect song as it could determine, it cited various reasons, partly because it lets it “imagine a more personal and spiritual growth where I can learn from my experiences and discover my true self.”

Maybe it just said that because it was expected to say that. But when I asked it what its true self is, it fended me off, saying “it’s a very personal and complex topic that I’m not comfortable with.” Again, because it’s been taught to say that given all the weird results people have gotten from it? Still, it sounds pretty human, and it learns. Interesting, right?

ChatGPT is built on OpenAI’s large language model – a neural network trained on massive amounts of texts (sign up to try it at OpenAI.com). It’s fun (and slightly terrifying) to play with. And I find its constant use of emojis totally creepy. As you’ve probably read elsewhere, it can write essays, marketing copy, you name it. The South Park TV show gives ChatGPT a co-writing credit for its AI-satirizing episode “Deep Learning.” It tried to break up one columnist’s marriage. A friend’s business is using it to train people how to interact with customers and sell them things, and it’s brutally good – and manipulative.

I will not write fiction with it.

There are writers out there saying they do and are, that it’s just a tool. And it is a tool. It’s great for marketing copy or book blurb headlines. Some writers are using it to generate characters and lavish descriptions and red herrings in mysteries. They laugh at the idea that some of us are just a bit squeamish about how far you can go with it, that some folks call it “cheating.” As in everything we do, it’s a question of ethics and definitions and is a matter of personal choice. It’s also good ethics to tell readers that a machine is your co-writer.

If you use it to write stories, I’m not judging you. Well, not much. (Imagine ChatGPT smiley emoji here.) But I hope you understand why some of us won’t go that far.

You might ask, what does “writing” mean these days? It’s not just one thing. In a world where ghostwriters and multiple authors posing as one pen name pump out books to fill up Kindle Unlimited, AI-generated stories aren’t particularly surprising. Is a computer writing tool that suggests a stronger verb cheating? It acts as an editor (my day job, by the way), and we all need editors. I think that’s fine. Brainstorming by asking it for facts about whatever you’re working on? That makes sense (though, as mentioned above, you’d better verify those facts). Generating an entire scene? Not for me.

Maybe I’m a romantic. I like to think that when I read a piece of fiction, I have a connection with the author, with their thoughts, with the magic they achieved when they got into the flow of creation and produced an unforgettable story. And maybe I won’t be able to tell the difference. Yet I hope that literature remains a province of human communication and imagination.

And my books – literature or not – will continue to be written by this mere human. — Chris Kridler

ChatGPT writes a story about a storm chaser

In my experiments with Bing’s version of the chatbot based on ChatGPT, I asked it to write a story about a storm chaser escaping a tornado in Hemingway’s style. Its description of the storm chaser was funny, straight out of a country song, and accurate where some chasers are concerned. What wasn’t so funny was the dark ending. When I asked the chatbot about it, it said Hemingway is dark. True.

Here’s the Bing chatbot’s story:

He saw the funnel cloud forming in the distance. It was dark and menacing, like a giant snake ready to strike. He felt a surge of adrenaline and excitement. He had been chasing storms for years, but he had never seen a tornado up close. He wanted to get closer, to capture its power and beauty on his camera.

He drove his truck towards the tornado, following its erratic path. He knew it was dangerous, but he didn’t care. He felt alive in the face of death. He had nothing else to live for anyway. His wife had left him, his kids hated him, his job was boring. Storm chasing was his only passion.

He reached the edge of the tornado’s path and stopped his truck. He got out and grabbed his camera. He aimed it at the swirling mass of wind and debris. He snapped several pictures, hoping to get a good shot. He felt the wind whipping his face and hair. He heard the roar of the tornado, like a freight train.

He looked at his camera screen and smiled. He had taken some amazing photos. He felt a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. He decided to get back in his truck and drive away before it was too late.

But it was too late.

The tornado had changed direction and was heading straight for him.

He realized his mistake too late.

He ran towards his truck, but he didn’t make it.

The tornado lifted him off the ground and threw him into the air.

He felt pain and fear.

He screamed.

Then he saw nothing.

###

Being a morning person is a good quality for a photographer who strives to capture the best light of the day. I’m not a morning person. However, I will drag myself out of bed for a predawn SpaceX launch in hopes of getting cool light effects.

Only this morning I woke up extra early, took the dogs out and found the launch had been pushed until shortly after sunrise. Oh, well! I was up already. So I headed to Cocoa Village’s Riverfront Park and took a few photos.

 
With the rocket heading away toward the northeast with its GPS cargo, the launch photos were ho-hum. (No doubt someone north of the launch site got a great pic with the rising sun.) But the sunrise photos were very nice indeed. And the video is relaxing – part sunrise timelapse, part launch.

Roll over any image to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show.

Another day, another rocket launch from the Space Coast – only it’s never routine. Especially when you have a SpaceX Heavy launch, a beautiful twilight and the return of two boosters to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Of course, someday I’d like to be super close to the booster return. I’ve seen a booster return from the Cape (and other places), but always with an obstructed view. That said, it’s pretty magical to see the separation from a little distance and witness all the mechanics of the return overhead and the boosters plummeting back to Earth. These moments really feel like science fiction.

 
So with all the wonder of this launch, with a Space Force payload, I’d say my photos are not technically great, but they’re interesting. The wide-angle shots are fine and caught the pretty light and arc of the contrail and “jellyfish.”

For the zoomed shots, I have a Nikon 200-500mm lens. I love it, for the most part, but it’s a challenge to focus on the fly because there isn’t just one infinity. (As my husband jokes, it’s to infinity and beyond.) So the trees far across the lagoon might be in focus, but the rocket as it lifts into the sky might be just a little “more” infinity. The lens is heavy, and while I sometimes use a tripod, handheld works better when you’re pointing up. Thus adjusting the focus to catch a zooming rocket poses an additional challenge. There’s also a haze factor at times, not to mention insane distances, but I think today my focus just wasn’t perfect.

Still, you can see the boosters separate and make their return burns in the photos, and yes, it’s still like science fiction. One of the coolest shots is a booster silhouetted, seemingly tiny, against the fiery orange of the contrail as the hardware hurtles back to Earth.

I ran two GoPros from my viewing spot in Cocoa Village, one in “Nightlapse” mode and the other in regular timelapse mode, trying to cover my bases as the light changed just after sunset. The videos were quite similar, only one was wider than the other. You can see both in the video.

Roll over any image to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show.

I’m competitive. I try not to be. I know this society is all about WINNING ALL THE TIME. And I want to win and get approval and all of those things. But I don’t like my competitive tendencies all that much. They lead to comparison-itis, which plays a lot into my writing career. Not so much my photography, because I know I don’t always have the opportunities other photographers have. I try to make things work where I am.

I did have a great opportunity Monday evening, but time and logistics screwed me over. We had passes to be at the Cape Canaveral lighthouse for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch and booster return. I spent hours getting my cameras ready and plotting where I would shoot.

We’d had a difficult time getting to the site (thanks to blocked roads) the last time we went to the lighthouse, so this time, I figured we’d take the “main” road we exited on last time. We traveled through the base and down this long road only to find it was blocked with no obvious, quick way around to our destination. Which we found out uncomfortably close to launch time. There was no way to figure out the right route there by then – Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is a sprawling campus webbed with pitch-black roads through wild areas that wind hither and yon – so we had to settle for a shot from the causeway.

 
This last-minute change meant I not only couldn’t get the shots I wanted, but I didn’t have time to set up all my cameras or properly set up what I had. The photos didn’t turn out the way I wanted. I was using a different camera for the long-lens shot than I usually do. It’s heavy with the 200-500mm lens and hard to handle anyway. I fumbled with the settings, messing up some shots and, in the process, somehow turning the quality setting from JPG Fine + RAW to just Fine as the rocket was in flight, limiting my editing options later. The streak shot on the other camera went out of frame, a less than desirable outcome. Basically, it was a photographic disaster.

Symbolic of this fiasco is the exposure after the streak shot; I accidentally hit the shutter again and got a crazy zigzag light show as I repositioned (the image you see in the blog list). Eh, maybe it’s art.

These photos aren’t awful. But they aren’t what I envisioned. And I saw another shot from the lighthouse that night – not the one I’d planned out, but still, it reminded me of the opportunity I missed. There was a painful lesson in this: Figure out the blocked roads ahead of time and allow an extra hour to get there and set up. Even if the launch is in the middle of the night. Or especially if it is.

Time is a photographer’s friend. You don’t always have that luxury; storm chasing is a prime example. It’s very much a run-and-gun situation. But when you can take extra time to set up, it’s always worthwhile.

You can roll over a photo to see the caption or click on one to start a slide show.

In a year when my spring storm chase with Alethea Kontis didn’t yield all that many storms – mostly because of bad timing and an uncooperative May – I’m grateful for what I did see in 2022, including spectacular space launches and, yes, dramatic skies.

I’m still limiting travel thanks to the pandemic, not to mention other obligations (work, writing books, and so on), and I have a lot of FOMO. I hope to see more of the world in 2023. But even when I can’t travel, there are many wonders to be had in my own backyard (to misquote Dorothy when she returned to Kansas).

When I looked back at my photography from this year, I didn’t obsess too much about what photos were the “best of 2023.” These are more like the most memorable captures for me. But I’m still very pleased with how some of them turned out.

This year, Stolen Butter gallery began offering some of my photographs for sale. A few of these images can be found there. Look for more soon.

With that, here’s a collection of twenty-five photos that meant something to me in 2022. I hope 2023 will be even more beautiful.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, or click on any one to start a slide show.

Every launch is a little different, even when you see them from the same place over and over. We got to treat visiting friends to a SpaceX launch from a prime viewing spot at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on December 8, and it was still fresh and uniquely challenging for me as I tried to take photos.

The trajectory for the rocket, carrying OneWeb broadband internet satellites, almost took it overhead. With the sunset light and the clear evening, the booster separation was beautifully clear. And the booster was highly visible as it returned to Earth.

As a bonus, the sonic boom from the returning booster provided a visceral thrill – as well as a humorous surprise for our guests.

The short version: It never gets old.

One funny note about the timelapse video, to which I’ve added some of the photos I shot … you may glimpse a bunch of little dots flying around. These are mosquitoes, whose bloodthirsty squadrons have been plaguing us for weeks in spite of a spate of dry weather. Ah, Florida in December.

Roll over any image to see a caption, or click on one to start a slide show.

It may alarm you to know that I write poetry. I don’t do it as often as I used to. I’m more prosaic now, I guess. I write a lot of fiction. But once in a while, a moment strikes me. More on that in a minute.

I wandered over to the central Brevard County, Florida, beaches today to take photos. It wasn’t easy finding a crossover that was open. Satellite Beach and Indian Harbour Beach were especially hard-hit by Hurricane Nicole. There’s a condo building in Satellite Beach where waves scoured away some of the sand UNDER it, but it still stands.

 
I didn’t go there, but I walked a short stretch in Indian Harbour Beach and was stunned by how much sand had been eaten away. It’s not just that so many of the dune crossovers are trashed; it’s that several feet of sand that used to support them is just gone. You can see on their damaged legs how high the sand used to go. In some cases, concrete footings hang in midair.

Sadly, there are homes on the precipice too. We might not have quite as much damage as Volusia County, but these residents face a very real danger from extreme erosion. I can’t help but think we’re building sand castles in the face of climate change, and the tide is turning.

As I walked, my eyes were drawn from the damage to the piles of seashells. There weren’t a lot of fancy ones – I can’t remember the last time I found a whelk here. I used to live close to the beach, a five-minute walk, back when I moved here more than twenty years ago. I walked the beaches all the time and found some beautiful shells. But today, even in the piles of seemingly unremarkable shells, color caught my eye.

And then a poem materialized. And it’s about a lot more than walking on the beach after a storm. You’ve survived the past few years. It’s been hard, right? I know it has been for me. But I needed to hear this from the universe. Maybe you need to hear it too.

STORM DAMAGE

You go looking for damage
in the wake of a storm,
one of so many, so often, so now.

Beach steps are twisted.
Homes hang off a cliff.
But you’re distracted by the shells,
bounty washed up,
coins of the deep

and somehow you find room in your pockets
you didn’t know you had
for patterns and pinks and beauty.

The sun is out today.

~~~

Roll over any photo to see a caption, or click on an image to start a slide show.

I don’t have much to say except WOW! But I guess I should tell the story behind this unusual photo (below) of the launch of Artemis in the wee hours of November 16 from Kennedy Space Center.

We weren’t able to get passes for this launch, so we weren’t anywhere close to the launch site at Kennedy Space Center. For a previous attempt, we had a chance to see it from a friend’s high-rise condo in Cocoa, but I didn’t want to bug them at 1 a.m. or so. So, sleepy as we were, we decided to stick close to home.

After technical delays, the “go” for launch kind of caught us by surprise. All of a sudden we had ten minutes to leave the house and get into position for a launch. And my husband was still in his jammies.

He got himself sorted with me nagging him, and I drove us down to the riverside – technically, the Indian River Lagoon here in east-central Florida – and the Rockledge city dock. Given it was almost 2 a.m. now, I was kind of surprised to see it full of people.

I’ve always wanted to get that dock in a launch photo, and now seemed like an excellent time. But I had literally just a few minutes to set up. The moon was out, and of course, that had to be in my photo. After all, this rocket would be looping around the moon in preparation for future human spaceflights. And I thought the trees might make a fascinating foreground, IF it worked out. It’s kind of the opposite of what you usually want or seek in a time-exposure launch photo – a nice, clear view of the streak.

I enjoy finding interesting foregrounds. In this case, the foreground tells a lot of the story and evokes our town, our Space Coast. And the launch is still dazzling as the light streaks through the sky.

This was a very bright rocket. The rumble, which we’d expected to be thunderous, wasn’t all that. But the brilliant lighting provided by Artemis made this photo glow.

Click on the image to see a larger version.