2019 photography Year in Review
1st viral image of 2019. January 20th. Lunar eclipse composite.
This was an unbelievable year for our workshops. We hosted over 700 people at our events in 2019! The weather was cooperative at most workshops and our guests got some tremendous shots. It was a banner year for bluebonnets across the state of Texas and severe weather season was very active.
The Lunar Eclipse kicked off the year in January. I created a composite of the progression of the eclipse over a barn with a Texas flag roof. I wanted the image to be online immediately after totality, so I shot the barn and moonrise, then started creating the composite. As the stages of the eclipse changed the appearance of the moon, I would grab a shot and add a moon into the image.
It instantly went viral and was shared on Facebook more than 27,000 times. My phone actually died while plugged in overnight because my phone was buzzing nonstop from notifications. The image was featured by in articles by Peta Pixel and My Modern Met and a host of media outlets.
Honestly, it isn’t my favorite image in the world and I received a TON of blowback from purist photographers and amateur astronomers but the point of it was to go viral, and I would definitely do it again.
February, as usual was spent preparing for the busy upcoming workshop season. We went on one storm chase in Dixie Alley, getting onto the first tornado warnings of the day, but nothing photogenic came out of it.
We kicked off March in Big Bend for 8 straight days of sold out Astrophotography Workshops. The region was experiencing a superbloom of Chisos bluebonnets, purportedly the best season in 30-40 years! We setup on a patch of bluebonnets north of Terlingua and shot the Milky Way rising over the flowers. The incredible landscape and pristine dark skies allowed me to create my second viral image of the year. The image was shared on facebook over 13,000 times.
Here are some other images from the week. I know all those flowers left a ton of seeds behind, so fingers crossed for another banner year in 2020.
2nd viral image of 2019. March 7th. Chisos bluebonnets & Milky Way.
After a quick turnaround from the Astrophotography Workshops we started the official bluebonnet season in the Hill Country on March 16th. A total of eight Bluebonnet Workshops and two Stars and Wildflowers Workshops, in addition to daily bluebonnet tours made for a very busy season. The Hill Country followed suit with Big Bend and had the best coverage I have seen in six years of photographing the state flower of Texas.
I was fortunate enough to have a third image go viral (over 20,000 shares on facebook) that was shot on the March 23-24 workshop. We spent the morning and early afternoon south of San Antonio photographing every imaginable foreground element in the flowers (horses, cattle, old windmills, abandoned houses, etc). We decided to head up to the tracks in the Hill Country in hopes of catching a sunset on the back edge of the cloud deck that had been present all day. Just as the sun went down, the sky exploded with color, which reflected on the dulled tracks.
The rest of the season went really well as the displays transitioned across parts of the Hill Country. We had peak bloom locations from mid-March to mid-April.
3rd viral image of 2019. March 23rd. Decommissioned railroad tracks.
After a couple days off to recover from bluebonnet season, it was on to severe weather season and our Tornado Adventures. My wife, Savannah, along with Matt Phelps, Russell Vargo, Michael Simmons, and Tom Yount assisted in giving our guests a safe and memorable experience. Huge thanks to them for their hard work and long hours behind the wheel.
We saw a total of 19 tornadoes during spring. Several big photogenic tornado days. Thankfully the tornadoes we saw were mostly well behaved with no widespread damage or fatalities on any of the twisters we chased. Always a good day when they remain over unpopulated areas.
The season wasn’t without its challenges, including flooding and extremely low visibility due to haze that persisted for about a week, but we saw a ton of great storms and a personal high number of tornadoes for me in one season.
Tornado Adventures Tour One Guest shoots Seymour, TX tornado.
McCook, NE tornado - May 17
We finished our severe weather season on June 15th. At that point I had been on the road for seven straight weeks. I had to meet with NBC for filming in DFW and had a brief run in with a tornado on my way there on June 16th in Irving. Then it was back on the road for two more chase days for that.
I started July on the Big Island of Hawaii for a 3 day/night Landscape Photography Workshop. We shot waterfalls, a black sand beach, and a green sand beach, as well as an old church that sat in the middle of a graveyard on the southern coast.
We went to Arizona at the end of July for three workshops in the course of 10 days. The monsoon was pretty active and cast a lot of cloud cover but we had a few good nights for stars outside of Monument Valley and at Antelope Canyon. We saw a lot of great storms as well, including some close range lightning on the final day of the Monsoon Storm Chasing Adventure.
We finished up the summer in Big Bend for one more round of Astrophotography Workshops. Savannah found this really cool prop to add a new dimension to our night time workshops. Expect more characters in 2020!
These workshops were all sold out, but were probably some of the smoother workshops we’ve run, so huge thanks to Michael Simmons, George Hamilton, and Russell Vargo for helping our guests in navigating through the darkness.
We ended the 2019 workshop schedule with a week long adventure around Iceland. Conditions for night sky photography looked pretty bleak the entire trip, but with some forecasting and schedule shifting, we were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse on 3 of 7 nights. We had a very strong outburst of auroras on our third night, near the town of Akureyri. We also explored thermal lakes, ice caves, glaciers, more waterfalls than I could count, and Diamond Beach.
We squeezed in one fall storm chase on October 21st. We weren’t able to leave Austin until around 7pm and had to hustle to get to the storms as they crossed I-35E. The structure was incredible. Tornado warnings began being issued as soon as we got onto the storms. As tempting as it was to get underneath and try to see a close tornado after dark, we opted to hang back and shoot the structure of the entire system watching tornadoes intermittently light up with power flashes.
That will probably wrap it up for me for the year. I may try to squeeze in a Geminid Meteor Shower shoot, but with the moon being full I’m not sure I will bother. No workshop for either big meteor shower in 2019, but will be doing workshops for both next year.
I am more than happy with the year we’ve had. Two dozen or so images I am really proud of, and we set new highs for number of workshop attendees. Huge thanks to each and every one of them for making 2019 an incredible year!
Have a safe and happy New Year and I will see y’all in 2020!