Author: Doug

Before the dive trip I was able to stop by my friend Davids place in Florida. David is one of a kind. You might have seen him on some television shows and movies but he is the real thing, not an actor. Stopped by to help out shooting some photos for his website while they were doing a video shot and did a pretty cool blog video with him.

Here are the photos from that day. I would sit next to the Cobras, I would get in the cage with his Lion, his Bears and even his buddy Congo but I drew the line at that damn Gator. That thing looked like it just saw me as lunch.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Ok, it’s been a while since I updated the blog so I wanted to get back on and posted a few quick updates before I crash for the night.

Been super busy with several tv show projects and helping them research footage.  Can’t say what for now, but they will be out soon on cable.

Next, been chasing storms when there within a few hours drive from home and working the news video with my video and the crews footage.  I will be posting a lot of new blog videos later today after I get some sleep.

I’m still working on the news website but that is taking a lot longer then expected just do to the size of the database and layout.  But it’s coming along. 

I did take some time off this past weekend from being a workaholic and went fishing with Neva on Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday we were up at the cabin up north but did not catch anything.  Sunday, we got a lot of fish and I even got a Northern and a Large Mouth Bass.  The Bass was… tasty, but the Northern got sent back to the deep.  I am learning that I really need to push back the work and creative research and story research stuff along with running the daily stuff for BNVN because I can only do so much.  It’s stressing me more and more lately trying to do way too much.  I need a vacation…

Today I did get out and into the field to go chasing but the storms sucked.  I put on 679 miles on the truck to go from home to the middle of South Dakota, chase some tiny hailers then come right back home.  All in all about a 12 hour round trip.  As I was setting up for tomorrow, er, today’s storms and looked over the forecast, I ended up bailing on the storm setup and came home.  The forecast was looking like an MCS and Bow Echo.  I thought, I could bail on this, go home and chase the system when it shows up on Thursday.

Well, it’s almost 3:00 in the morning, yes, work-a-holic and I need to get cleaned up and get some sleep.

6/18/2009 Supercell Thunderstorms hit the central Minnesota and dropped a lot of hail and heavy rain.

Various shots of lightning with a supercell thunderstorm, driving into the storm and footage from inside the hail core where the visibility was less then 20 feet.

Catalog # 06182009A
Total Run Time: 04;09;18
Format: HD

I thought I was going to have an easy day getting stuff caught up on the website today but that was a major FAIL.  I was suckered into going out and ended up in SW MN and ended up too far to the west so I got a tan when the tornadoes were hitting Austin, MN and another one in my first target area up west of Alexandria MN.  Oh well, can’t get them all but wait, I can’t but BNVN can…

Today was insane for the news desk.  We had a ton of video come in.

Yeah, it’s been a pretty busy day working on a ton of content.  Now it’s time to get cleaned up and rest and go and do it all over again tomorrow, er, I mean today.

It’s been a pretty busy couple of months and I have not been updating my personal site often.  I’ve been busy working on lots of stuff for BNVN and helping out my friends. 

Now it’s time to get caught up with my own projects.  This week I’m working on a lot of stuff at home.  The garden will be big on the list but that is just for weeding since most of it is already going string. 

Things on my todo list include Tape Review, I have about 30 hours of HDV tape that I need to review,

Then major site updates with all the new stock footage will be taking place over the next few weeks. 

It is interesting to see the stock footage that I shot last year.  Right now I’m watching the footage I shot last July that I forgot I even had.

Ok, just noticed that the new chase video from the crew have not been showing up in the blog pages so I’m going to post them below.   There has been a lot of stuff happening in the last few weeks and first and foremost is the new site is almost ready to go back on line for BNVN.  It’s a ton of work that I have been having to take care of but it’s going to look pretty sweet when it’s all done.   I’m just reviewing the info for over a 1300+ stock archive videos. 

I’ve been pretty busy between the ENG video, stock website and wrapping up research on another project that I have to decide if it should go the documentary film route or make it into a script but I’m hanging in there and might get out to do some storm chasing this week.  It will be great to get out from working the news desk and back into the field to shoot some news packages.

Now for the latest BNVN news footage from the crews out in the field for the last couple of weeks.  This is not all the footage our news crews have shot but its some of the most WOW factor footage in the last couple of weeks that has been all over the news.

The footage is up on

BNVN.com

What a difference one year makes.  A year ago today I woke up in Hays Kansas and was getting ready to go chasing with Chris.  The weather setup was perfect and you could not ask for a better setup then what was handed to all the chasers.  Even the yahoo’s did not need to follow chasers around to find the storms because it was like shooting fish in a barrel. 
We even met up with a cool new chaser, Brandon Clark,  that we thought was a yahoo coming to bug us but turned out it was someone that really wanted to learn how to chase and stopped to ask us if he could tag along.  We brought him along for the ride of his life over the next two days. 
Now fast forward into 2009 and were under the ridge of death.  What is the ridge of death?  It is a massive high pressure ridge that would normally setup in July or August that makes it pretty much impossible for supercell storms to fire.  That is why it is called the Ridge Of Death, it is death to the storm chasing season.
I can’t complain too much because I did meet up with Jacob and Dave last week and we did chase the one storm that defined the month of May, which was the Kirksville, MO tornado.  But since then, there has not been anything worth chasing that has been more then hours drive away.  But there still is some stuff to photograph like the lightning from early yesterday. 
Here was some cloud to cloud lightning from just north of Litchfield, MN. Time to get back to working on database stuff…

Ok, I just got home about a half hour ago and taking care of a few things like posting the video from yesterday that the BNVN team shot in north centeral Missouri.  We got a lot of great footage and Tornado Tim even kept rolling as the tornado we (David, Jacob and I) were filming north of Kirksville, MO and thought we were going to get his, it changed direction and went to the southeast and hit him.  The only way to describe the footage is it looks like some hurricane charley footage with debris flying.

Ok, I have been up for 46, yes 46 hours and I’m dead on my feet and need sleep so here is the link to the video. 

I’m Off To See The Wizard…

Today on this sixth anniversary of the Kansas Turnpike near death tornado, I was close to home trying not to get hurt again but this time it was a little more controlled.  As in a controlled burn…