STORM TRACK: May 31, 1982 (Volume 5 Issue 4)

Henry Lansford has published an excellent, short article on "Photographing the Sky" in Kodak's "The 11th Here's How" book, available in camera stores and in a recent, issue of Weatherwise. Aside from some advice that is fairly obvious or logical to those who have used cameras for any period of time, here are some points that either were new to me or bear repeating:

- Consider "framing" your subject with foreground trees, structures, etc. (A tornado with some house, structure or people in the foreground will be more interesting than looking over an empty prairie. Not, that we always have the luxury of picking our shots, but a little thought ahead of time can improve what you take.)

- Shoot a lot of film and vary exposures on those important scenes by within 1/2 f-stop on either side of that specified by your meter.

- Use a fast shutter speed, tripod or both.

- Slightly under-expose to get good rainbow pictures.

- Use a 35 mm wide angle or 80-200 zoom lens.

Much more good advice is given and some exquisitely beautiful Colorado cloud pictures in both books. You are encouraged to add this to your storm reference library.

I would also add to this -try shooting overlapping panorama shots of wide horizon storm scenes. Be sure to locate the horizon line in the same part of your aperture each time, so that processed slides/prints will line up approximately the same. Some trimming of prints may be necessary but the less -the better. Unless you are or become very adept at splicing prints, don't try to overcome the inevitable exposure differences between adjoining pictures by increasing the amount of overlap. You could lose more in a scene with 6 non-professional splices than in the same scene with only 2 Try the panoramas, the results can -occasionally- be spectacular.