A modern-day Jack Kerouac has spent the past two years chasing down storms in the United States to capture a series of dramatic landscapes.
Mitch Dobrowner trawls the Great Plains and Tornado Valley in the American Midwest, watching for subtle changes in the weather and light before capturing the perfect storm. The epic prints, reproduced on cotton paper, have won him awards across the globe, from Paris to New York. "When shooting storms you usually don't know what to expect,"
Dobrowner told Wired.co.uk. "I have to stay focused and be ready to make fast decisions.... especially when all hell is breaking lose around you. It's a great challenge."
A Long Island native, Dobrowner first picked up a camera aged 17 when his father gave him an Argus WWII rangefinder. His hobby turned into addiction after he witnessed the works of Ansel Adams and
Minor White, two photographers born at the turn of the century who made their names immortalising the American landscape on film. "The Midwest looked like another planet compared to what I was used to seeing on the East Coast. The manner in which they used light to express feeling and emotion inspired me to look further into photography as an art form. I became addicted. Eventually I left home to travel to see the landscapes with my own eyes."
At 21, Dobrowner packed up and left to see America for himself, ending up in California where he settled and made a life for the next 20 years. It wasn't until 2005, when he was encouraged to take up landscape photography again, that he noticed a pattern in his work. "I always found myself going out for the nastiest weather I could find. I've always found it fascinating to be standing out in the desert, in the rain, the wind blowing, all alone, without another person around for miles. It is a surreal experience to me." "These storms are living, breathing things. They are born under the right conditions, they gain strength, they fight against their environment to stay alive, they change form as they age... and eventually they die. These storms take on so many different aspects, personalities and faces, it just bewilders me."
On 12 June 2009, he witnessed his first supercell thunderstorm -- he was hooked.
He stuck with the 4x5 black and white film he began his training on, upgrading from the Ansel Adams Zone system to digital. After experimenting with colour, he discarded the medium as "too realistic". "[One time, in] Valentine, Nebraska I was standing in a wheat field with wind gusts eclipsing 60mph, witnessing lightning strikes every few seconds, hearing the rumble of hail -- all while standing in front of an 18km-high mesocyclone. I could not believe what I was seeing; it was unlike anything I've ever seen before in my life. I remember turning to someone standing next to me and saying,
'what the fuck... you have to be kidding me'."
Dobrowner likens the experience to an extreme sport and, although shots are generally taken at a safe distance, the unpredictable subject can get a little close for comfort on occasion.
On 19 July 2010, in Moorcroft, Wyoming, Dobrowner and his team had been following a storm for three hours. "When we finally got in front of it we found ourselves standing in a field waiting for the approaching storm to come into view. All of a sudden this monster storm cloud started coming over the hills towards us at about 40mph. At first I was shocked at its beauty, but it became quickly apparent that I didn't have much time to shoot as tennis ball sized hail had started falling."
As he points out, sometimes the storm ends up chasing you.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
