10/31/2006 4:00 PM – Just working on the scans and photo reviewing stuff. Here is another lost image that I brought back from the dead or the pile of lost negatives. Just thinking back over the last year and a year ago today I was in New York City doing stuff for National Geographic. Man how time goes by. Anyway, here is the lost image.
10/31/2006 5:30 AM – Working at home today to get caught up on the scans and the video archive. I have the bulk of the scans done but I’m just going back and re-scanning some stuff that I need to color correct and get to look the way I want. I have had a few people ask me about the project last week and what it was all about. I can’t say until after it is broadcast due to the investigative news aspect but I can say this, someone in Florida is screwed!!!
10/27/2006 8:30 PM – Just got home after a pretty fun day. I got a video assignment from a TV Station in Orlando to go and shoot some stuff for them in Wisconsin for the day. Man I miss this type of work. Setup lights, run cameras during the interview, shoot some B-Roll and not have to do anything with the freaking weather. And the sick thing is, these gigs can be lame sometimes but they pay very well. I just did not like them in the past since I could not go and chase storms at a moments notice. But now that I’m older and wiser, hell yeah, I’m getting back into the Midwest freelancer news video market for stations and production companies that are not from the Twin Cities. It was so freaking great to not have to go and find the story again. Just go here and shoot this.
What was this gig of? I won’t say until after the story is on the air in a few weeks but I will say this, it is F’n Huge!
10/25/2006 7:00 PM – I got the urge and I needed my dive fix and the weather was nice and sunny fall day here in Minneapolis so I went scuba diving. Man it was a little chilly at 43 feet down with the temp only at 46F but then again that was what it normally is down there. But it was a scuba dive so it was all good.
10/25/2006 12:30 PM – At home just editing the video from yesterday of which I was in the middle of some grass fires in Savage MN. Here is a video still from the stuff yesterday. I should have the video up later today. I got so close to the flames at one point that I have a little sun burn on my forehead.
10/24/2006 1:55 AM – I’m just wrapping things up before I take tomorrow / today off in the morning to go scuba dive around town. I am working on the site behind the scenes and I’m down to my last 4 rolls of film to scan on the automatic setup and 2 rolls of film to scan in that are of the Auroras. The problem with the Auroras is when I put the scanner on auto to clean up the dust and smooth out the grain, it removed all the stars when I scanned them yesterday. My hope is to get through the negs by the end of the day and just be done with this project.
What else have I been working on. I have been putting together all the numbers for the up coming price list. I should have that on line by the end of today. Yes my hurricane Katrina prices are going to be high but I have a unique product that nobody else has. I have had a couple people bitch about paying $90 per second for broadcast rights and telling me they can get Katrina footage from other chasers royalty free or for $35 per second. Fine go for it, good luck trying to find Katrina footage on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans since I was the only one there.
Another hope of mine by finally listing the private prices. When other chasers, and I know you guys read this shit for ideas, see what I charge and see what the license restrictions and how I do it, they will start charging more. I just laugh at other chasers selling Royalty Free Video packages. That is for people who are broke and in need of money. There is only one way to be successful at storm chasing and make a living at it. How can you be successful? Know what your clients need before they know what they need and provide the best product for them so that when they see it, they know you know them. How do you do that? I’m not telling you except for it all boils down to experience. But it is cool to see the saying out there now of WWKD which is What Would Kiesling Do or WIKD for What Is Kiesling Doing.
Don’t get me wrong, I started shooting photographs of lightning years ago and I would see post cards from stuff around the midwest and say it would be cool to do that with lightning. Photographers rip off each others ideas all the time and that’s just a fact of life. I heard a while back that some chasers in OK were pissed off because I made money chasing and it was all about the money and not the chase. Um no, BNVN is about bringing the pay scale up for the BNVN chasers and helping them out by opening doors that would normally get slammed in their face. If another chaser sells a tornado video for $1000 to The Weather Channel, I don’t mind that much. There keeping the pay scale up to where it is suppose to be at to make chasing profitable. But when some dumb ass wanna be chaser that has been chasing for a year or two or has the mind set that they are a bad ass cowboy from down south with the laws of the road be damned because they are with sky warn… When those idiots give away their footage for next to nothing, well, there just fucking everyone over. Because once the TV producers know that someone will work cheap, they will always expect them to work cheap. And with some of the people working the news desks, I swear they get off on trying to screw the freelancer over to get cheap video.
Some people will pay for fame by giving away their video just to get their name on TV. Um guess what, nobody cares or see’s that except maybe some friends and family. From a business point of view, getting your name on TV and giving away broadcast rights is a dumb ass move.
10/22/2006 4:50 AM , Just wrapping up stuff here this morning before I call it a night. I’m down to the last 12 rolls of film to be scanned in for the photo project. I have got a lot of the stuff that was on my plate out of the way and hope to have the last of the images scanned in by Tuesday or Wednesday. I saw that the soon to be Hurricane Paul is heading for BFE Mexico and I decided that it really is not worth it to chase that one in the middle of no where Mexico when I got a lot of stuff on the burner up here that I need to work on.
I figure once I get the negs scanned in and start working on the photo pages, I can finish up Weather Paparazzi by the first week of November then start on the new DVD project. Since I’m almost out of the Hurricane Katrina DVDs and the Hurricane Charley DVDs, I’m putting together a best of DVD that will include all of the hurricanes as well as the tornado video, lightning footage and the Aurora footage. This will look back at the whole Weather Paparazzi footage from the last 3 years. It will include a lot of never before seen footage and be pretty cool. I’m also talking to some of the guys about using their footage in it as well from the chases they joined me on.
All in all, it should be pretty cool once I’m done.
Also, here are a couple new images that I found in the scan pile. Yeah, and why did I get the nick name Lightning boy? Ha! Even though I’m still not done scanning in the new stuff, I have over 200 gigs of new scans to work with. The stock photography section is going to be huge.
10/20/2006 – I have to wonder if people are really that stupid. I just got a email bitching at me for not getting back to some college student about sending him free footage for his college project. PEOPLE, I SELL VIDEO FOR A LIVING, I AM NOT THE GOOD WILL OF VIDEO!!! If you want free video, go shoot it your self. Spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on going to different location’s, weeks away from home, busted up equipment, near death experiences and do it your self!!! If you want my work, it is my work and you pay for my work. Don’t ask me for free shit, I have bills to pay.
10/16/2006 6:00 PM, Today I have been working on finishing up the scans of all the old film to get into the computer and the get it all off to storage. It will be nice to get a lot of this stuff out of the home and into storage finally to make room and not have everything cluttered. I’m also uploading the footage from last week of the fall colors along Taylors Falls and the Michigan Snow Storm. The Michigan Snow Storm footage is up on Google but I have not embedded the link on my site yet.
10/14/2006
Back from the frozen tropical storm in Upper Michigan
I got back home from Upper Michigan yesterday and crashed as soon as I got home.
Back home after a long but fun chase. I was caught up on a lot of stuff at home and really wanted to get away for a chase since this years hurricane season pretty much sucked ass and I was getting SDS (Storm Depervation Syndrom) so I chased Upper Michigan.
First off, the Houghton and Hancock area rocks. Everyone is super cool and I love that place. Case in point, while shooting some video on 41 right in front of the city hall, a cop came out to talk to me. I thought it would be the move along, homeland security you can’t film here B.S. Nope, it was hey man, who you shooting for, come on in and grab some coffee if your cold, where can I get a copy of the video later. Totally cool!!! The people at the coffee shop where totally cool too. Everyone there is totally cool. The whole area is so laid back, it reminded me how things were 15 years ago before all the security and terror risk fenced in b.s. stuff. What really amazed me was all the burned up embers on the lake shore. I thought they had a massive wild fire or something and some people told me “Oh no, everyone goes out on the beach to party during the summer and starts up a camp fire and camps out on the beach.” I was totally blown away. No political correct B.S and no you can’t do that for fear of global warming or that might offend someone. It was all cool up there and the country side was like just west of Denver with the hills and mountains. I can’t wait to go back up there in a couple months when they have a couple hundred inches of snow on the ground just to go play in it.
Anyways, enough with how much the U.P. of Michigan rocks.
I left Minneapolis on the 11th to chase the forecasted winter storm in Upper Michigan. The forecast was for a couple feet of snow. That did not happen. It snowed a couple inches in Houghton and up in the hills around Twin Lakes, they got over a foot of snow, the wet heavy snow. The temps did not get that cold and it was pretty amazing to see the weather change from 25 to almost 40 just in a few miles from on top of the mountains to down by the lake.
I did meet up with Rocky on Thursday just as the monster snow started. We had snow pellets falling that were worthy of calling in as pea sized hail. Here is Rocky in the tropical storm force winds and snow getting just soaked while he was checking out the monster waves.
The wave action was pretty sweet and was just like a tropical storm which is why I’m calling it a Frozen Tropical Storm.
Here is me leaning into some 48 mph winds on Friday Morning. On one side of the breakers the lake was violent but on the other side it was pretty calm.
Between snow bands the sun would come out and would clear up and make the white caps look meaner.
Here is the Ontonagon light house, the new light house since the old one is now in the middle of a paper mill ship yard.
Just outside of town I took this photo of the fall colors. Some red’s, some yellow’s, some gold’s and a lot of white. This made the Weather.com photo of the day on Thursday.
There is not a lot to see in between towns and not a lot of people until you get up to Houghton or Ontonagon since the smaller towns are just small resort towns but the scenery is great!!! I shot more video and took more photos on this trip then I did for Tropical Storm Alberto and I got better waves on the breakers.
But for those who don’t like the cold, the wind chill was brutal. I was wearing some of my scuba gear under my clothes just to stay dry and kill off the winds. In the photo of me leaning back into the wind, I’m wearing a 3.5 mil long wet suit hood to keep the wind away from freezing my ears and face. It worked pretty slick and my 5mm dive gloves were great for working the camera and keeping my hands warm without getting in the way of feeling for the controls. The water proof boots were great when the storm surge waves would move up to where I was standing and kept my feet dry. The lake was 18″ below normal with the drought so I could only imagine what the waves and surge would have been like at the normal lake depth.
All in all, it was a fun trip and even having a little chaser convergence in one of the most remote places in the United States next to the Keys. Now that I think about it, the U.P is The Key’s Of The North, only conservative.
Oh yeah, I shot several packages for the weather channel while I was up there so I was working, well, if you can call my job work.
10/11/2006 11:50 PM Eastern. I’m up in Upper Michigan to cover the winter storm. I already shot one video for The Weather Channel today and this system is just getting started. Tomorrow should be pretty intense.
No, it is not a winter storm, it is a frozen tropical storm. Here is the forecast from the National Weather Service.
1123 PM EDT WED OCT 11 2006 …FIRST WINTER STORM OF THE SEASON FOR PORTIONS OF WEST AND CENTRAL UPPER MICHIGAN…
A LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM LOCATED NORTHEAST OF LAKE SUPERIOR WILL CONTINUE TO INTENSIFY AS IT DRIFTS SLOWLY EAST AND NORTH THROUGH THURSDAY. POST FRONTAL LAKE EFFECT SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE TO DEVELOP OVER WESTERN AND NORTH CENTRAL UPPER MICHIGAN. WEST TO NORTHWEST WINDS TONIGHT AND THURSDAY MORNING WILL BRING THESE LAKE EFFECT SNOW SHOWERS TO LOCATIONS NORTH AND WEST OF A LINE FROM CRYSTAL FALLS TO MARQUETTE…WITH THE HEAVIEST SNOW EXPECTED ALONG THE HIGHER TERRAIN FROM IRONWOOD TO PAINESDALE. WINDS WILL BECOME MORE SOUTHWESTERLY BY THURSDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH THURSDAY NIGHT…FOCUSING THE HEAVIER SNOW OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN NORTH OF PAINESDALE. IN ADDITION TO THE SNOWFALL…WINDS WILL GUST TO 40 MPH AT TIMES TONIGHT AND NEAR 50 MPH AT TIMES THURSDAY AND THURSDAY NIGHT.
10/10/2006 9:00 PM Ok, been working like a dog here getting a lot of stuff caught up and now it is time to go back on the chase. Tomorrow I am heading up to the U.P. of Michigan and chasing the winter storm. It will be coming in with lake effect snow and big ass waves like a frozen hurricane.
10/10/2006 8:00 PM Just finished up the fall colors video for The Weather Channel. I was up shooting from Taylors Falls to Stillwater MN.
10/9/2006 03:30 AM – I pulled another all nighter, well, not really, I took a nap after dinner but yeah, I worked again right through the night cleaning up my desk. Check out the photos below from now and yesterday. I ended up filling up a large trash bag with worthless film negs and photos. All I can say is WOW, a just cleared out a lot of crap off my desk.
All the negs are sorted into what needs to be scanned and what needs to go to archive. Everything is coming along just great now. After some sleep and then getting the new windshield for my Jeep after last weeks hail storm, I plan in jumping right back into the scanning and video tap review while the scanner is doing its thing.
Looks like Wednesday I will be out playing in the snow and North Korea fired off a nuke. Its Global Warming… NOT!
10/8/2006 4:15 PM – If your looking to get an idea of the stuff that I’m working on right now, here is an image of the right side of my huge L shaped desk in my office. It is a six foot section that is covered with all of the old negatives and slides that I pulled out of the archive to organize and then file away “IN ORDER” once the images are scanned in. I don’t have to scan all of the images, just review and organize everything and then scan or re scan some of the stuff for the new photo gallery site.
I have found several images of northern lights and tornadoes that I did not even remember I had. Now I just want to get everything in order and scanned so I can finish the site ASAP.
One thing is for sure, once this project is done, it will be another huge load off my back and I can file away all this stuff in storage.
10/7/2006 4AM – Woke up early and I’m working on the photo archive. Yesterday I picked up a new scanner that will let me scan the last few years of the print and slide photography work. I could not believe how hard it was to track down a good new scanner that can scan 35mm and 120 film since everything has gone digital photography.
So what is the scoop with all of the photography stuff? Well I started editing and got a good chunk of the photographs reviewed and edited and ready for the web. Only problem, I was going to use a java script photo gallery until I read and heard a few of the horror stories about people ripping off images. So now I have to go over everything again and put the watermark on the images to prevent the internet scum bags from ripping off the images.
Is that a problem with people ripping off images and video? Hell yes!!! I have been finding my stuff on You Tube, and Yahoo Video and even on Google video of the old WMV files. So before I put the still photographs back on line, I’m watermarking everything then putting it on line. I hope to have it back up on line in the next 2 weeks.
10/4/2006 5:00 PM – Well yesterday sucked. While I was out filming the harvesting and fall colors, on my way home a late season storm fired up and I got hail cored. It was like being in the middle of a hurricane at night with stuff flying all over the place and slamming into the truck. My front window got cracked up and dents in the hood and roof are pretty nasty. If I knew there was going to be hail, I would have rented a car for the day.
10/3/2006 11:00 AM – Out to do some fall colors video and out in the area around Mankato to document people harvesting. I’m sure I will get several people jumping off their equipment to find out what I’m doing. Just shooting B-roll stock footage for today.
10/1/2006 – 2:20 AM. Currently I’m wrapping up the Aurora Chase. I’m sitting in the middle of a field somewhere north of Anoka. I was watching a pretty cool aurora display.
