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Who knew drainage ponds could be so beautiful? This one by Space Coast Stadium in Viera, Florida, reflected a gorgeous sunrise this morning. Those clouds were just the beginning, as rain showers and thunder roamed through the Space Coast today.

“Casual portrait” sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?  “Portrait” makes one think of posing in front of a mottled blue cloth, perhaps at a department store, and gazing into the flat, bright lights of the studio. And the blue cloth certainly has its place, sometimes – I was window-shopping for one recently myself. But I much prefer to take photos of people outdoors, when the light is good, and when the setting has a chance to become part of the photos. The beach has endless appeal in this area, but recently, I visited Pennsylvania and had the opportunity to do portrait shoots in park settings. The flowers were gorgeous, and the grass and trees were lush and green. With the sun low in the sky, the light was divine.

One of the shoots was with members of my family, and as they started to relax and have fun, the pictures reflected their mood. I especially like the shots of my dad playing with my nephew; it was so nice to see such rare happiness. Little kids have a lot to do with that! The pictures of my brother’s family came out well, too. It was as if summer added its glow to the scene.

Are you getting portraits taken of your family for a special occasion, or maybe for holiday cards? Or maybe you’re just overdue. I recommend having a photographer do a portrait session in a beautiful place, or a place with texture and interest, or a place that means something to you. Prepare to spend some time. Coordinate your clothes, but you don’t all have to wear the same thing. (Though jeans and white or pastel shirts can be very effective!) Avoid brand names and logos on the kids’ shirts, for a more timeless look. And play. A good photographer will play with you, and you’ll get joyous, spontaneous and even some “formal” informal portraits to treasure.

See more photos from these sessions and others in my photo galleries.

There’s a reason photographers like to shoot at the beach. It has a magic all its own. The morning (and evening) light is lovely, and there’s something about the waves that makes people relax.

I just shot photos at the beach in Cape Canaveral of my sister-in-law and her adorable kids. While the children’s attention span was short for posed shots, they were so sweet playing in the ocean, one couldn’t help but get some nice photos.

Ah, luminous youth! See the photos here.

How much I’d give to see an old photo of my grandfather come to life in a video in (simulated) three dimensions, as if the camera were there, moving in on that face and the cigar and his great old car and the old house I remember from my childhood.  I can’t, yet, but Miklos Falvay, a Hungarian media design artist, used 3D software to create such an effect for a documentary, “Motalko.” It’s amazing. I heard about it on BlenderNation via Twitter. Please watch … it’s lovely.

ARCHIVE PHOTO INSERTS FROM MOTALKO from Miklós Falvay on Vimeo.

We had a really nice July 4, first at a pool party, though I dozed off with the dogs for a little while during the sixth hour of conversation about cycling, and then watching the Cocoa fireworks down by the river. Before and after the big boomers, which of course terrified the little dog, our niece and nephew and our friends and their boy went nuts with sparklers. Ah, the simple joy of flying sparks. Only these days, all the kids were attempting to cast spells out of the “Harry Potter” books as they thrust their sparklers at unseen enemies. Fortunately, I was not turned into a were-rabbit, or whatever people get turned into by Harry Potter spells.

What does one do while driving thousands of miles and, as has happened the last two days, busting on storm chases? Take a few pictures. I wish I’d taken more, but so much time is consumed by actually getting from one place to another. The freakin’ distances out here are massive.

I recently had the chance to take some photos of my friend Heidi and her beautiful little boy, Ryan, who was on the cusp of his second birthday. It’s fun finding that moment of joy and capturing it on camera, but I love all the expressions that cross a child’s face, including the grumpy ones. I wonder what I was thinking at that age. Probably, “Can I have a cookie?” I added a few photos to that gallery this weekend when I dropped by Ryan’s birthday party.

 

At another party, at a lovely location along the Indian River Lagoon, I shot a few photos of friends and their kids. We have furry children (dogs), so it was fun to see the real kids playing among the rocks, stalking one another with Nerf guns and making s’mores. All of that marshmallow-roasting is enough to make a girl nostalgic.

 

The weather has been gorgeous here in Florida, but I’m waiting for the pattern to change out west so I can hit the road for my annual storm-chasing trip. After last week’s violent tornadoes, the atmosphere seems to be taking a breather.

We just got back from a trip to South Florida, where I made my first visit to Butterfly World. I was interested in both the passion flower collection and, naturally, the butterflies. It exceeded my expectations. The humdrum lobby gave nothing away, but as soon as we entered the first exhibit, we were surrounded by clouds of fluttering butterflies, which weaved among the colorful flowers and around the heads of guests as if – as one visitor put it – they were dreaming. Or I was dreaming, maybe. I took a lot of photos, so I can prove it wasn’t a dream. They are kept in a series of linked, screened houses so they don’t escape. Other, similar houses hold hummingbirds and other feathered creatures. There’s also a creepy bug museum and the amazing passion flowers, though I wish more of them had been blooming. Still, their delicate complexity continues to fascinate me. I recently wrote a story about passion flowers, most of which are native to South America, and learned there are about 600 types.

This is why I love taking photos of animals: They are constantly moving, so a great photo feels like a rare event (not unlike taking photos of children). They are full of life and personality. If they look you in the lens, it’s always a moment. And they and their people are fun!  A couple of months ago I went to a herding trial at Judith Kelly’s Asher-Dell Farm in Malabar, Florida, and I had the opportunity to shoot the trainers putting the dogs (and the sheep) through their paces. The dog in the photo was taking no nonsense from these sheep.

 

I have extensive archives from my early storm chasing years. I chronicled almost every day on the road, even bust days, at the old SkyDiary site, with lots of photos. In the interest of collecting everything in one place, I’m moving the highlights of the older chases – or quirky moments worth remembering – over to ChrisKridler.com. With that in mind, this post collects just a few of the posts from 2010 and a few photos to accompany them.

Jan. 6-10, 2010: Several nights of freezing temperatures shocked central Florida and its plants at the start of January. I caught a few photos of sleet and ice – a very strange thing to see in Brevard County.

 

Feb. 11-12, 2010: Right after one of New York’s Snowmageddons this winter, I got some snowy shots in and around Central Park.

 

May 10, 2010: This was one of those absolutely nuts, off-the-hook storm days. The models had suggested it was coming for days, so every chaser and media person you can imagine was out to see the disaster in the making. Then the Storm Prediction Center issued a high risk of severe storms, including strong tornadoes. The big problem for chasing: They were expected to haul butt northeast at highway speeds, meaning you couldn’t really chase the storms very well – you had to put yourself in front of them and hope. I started the day in Norman, Oklahoma, and picked Ponca City as a preliminary target. I ended up meeting up with Scott McPartland, Dave Lewison, Mark Robinson and Mark’s crew of meteorology types in Blackwell, in north-central Oklahoma, and we went after a storm that went up near Woodward. (From home, Steve Sponsler and Cheryl Chang both said it split.) We caught it as it put down a brief but pretty tornado. Churning east, suddenly, instead of northeast, it then put down a multi-vortex tornado. I regret not getting more video or stopping for longer than a few seconds, but it literally chased about a hundred chase cars down Route 11 at about 55 mph. NOT a good situation. As it finally eased north of the road, the radar hook on it indicated a big (if unseen and rain-wrapped) tornado. After that, I did a lot of stair-stepping east of I-35, trying to catch another storm, but it was darn near impossible. I hope my next chase is a slow one. Many, many tornadoes occurred today, costing lives and causing damage. It was a tough day and a sad one.

 

May 11, 2010: There are more people pictures than sky photos in this summary, because this was a classic storm chase in the sense that we ended up waiting around a lot for the cap to break. Today I took along a friend for her first chase, Tiffany Crumrine. We chased with Scott McPartland, Dave Lewison, Mark Robinson and crew, and met up with various folks along the way before becoming separated from them all (except for hearing them over the radio). What seemed like a significant storm potential and a lot of juice went to waste before sunset with little in the way of storms – except one pretty, tornado-warned corkscrew, below.

 

May 12, 2010: Any hopes for isolated storms today were dashed pretty quickly once the line went up. A few remained discrete for a little while, and we followed one from Alva, Oklahoma, into Kansas, but we missed the rare tornadoes today. I chased with Scott McPartland and Dave Lewison, and Mark Robinson and his crew.

 

May 16, 2010: I was on my own today. I drove from Carlsbad, New Mexico, to Odessa, Texas, and got an oil change, expecting that I might have a chance to chase whatever popped up later in that area. But by the time I was done, the biggest severe storms were going up in Oklahoma. That was out of reach, and I liked the boundary and bit of moisture convergence in eastern New Mexico, near Clovis. I started heading in that direction when just a few compact storms started to pop. Despite less than ideal conditions, a couple went severe, slowly moved southeast, and made for a fun and photogenic chase.

 

May 18, 2010: I started the day in Lubbock, Texas. It seemed to me the best conjunction of moisture, wind profiles and other factors pointed to the Oklahoma-Texas border in the northwest Texas panhandle. As I drove into Amarillo, I heard the old crew (Dave Lewison, Scott McPartland, Mark Robinson and friends) on the radio and met up with them and with Bill Hark in Dumas. We went to Dalhart to wait for a likely storm, and a blip on radar near Dumas quickly became an amazing, isolated supercell. Our crew split up, but I met them later. I say I saw “at least one” tornado today because one was obvious. Another sure looked like one, but I’m waiting for confirmation. And who knows how many I filmed in the dense hail/rain core without knowing it. There were a lot of “scud bombs” hanging from the storm that probably prompted reports, too.

 

May 19, 2010: I started the day with Scott McPartland, Dave Lewison, Bill Hark, Mark Robinson and crew in Shamrock, Texas. We drove to Weatherford, Oklahoma, to wait for storms to fire. A couple did and almost immediately produced tornadoes, but we were nowhere near them – and then, as the storms went more high-precipitation and we caught up with the one near Leedey, it provided awesome structure but not much in the way of tornadoes unless you were in the hail or flying a news helicopter (one got great footage of a tornado near Kingfisher). It was still a fun chase. We split up as we caught up with the storm. I chose to stay south of it and got some nice pictures of the rotating mesocyclone, the hail core and a funnel west of Guthrie, where the tornado sirens were screaming as I drove through. I ended the day with a fantastic sunset in Arcadia, as the storms moved east and my Plains storm chase winds down.

 

 

September 2, 2010: It’s been an excruciatingly dull summer in terms of weather, but distant Hurricane Earl generated photogenic waves off east-central Florida as it neared the Carolina coast. These shots were taken in Satellite Beach.