Author: Doug

Here is another lost image. This is May 4th, 2003 – Kansas Turnpike Tornado Photo.
I shot this with a throw away camera so the negs had some major scratches in them. But the image when cleaned up looks pretty sweet. That treeline is only 100 yards away from at best. Part of the problem with the photo is that I’m pretty much IN the debris field at this time and it was shot with a POS camera. It took the better part of last night and this morning to clean this up because I scanned it in at 12,000 dpi to get at the defects and the 12,000 dpi scan is over 1 gig in size. With the file being that huge, it takes a while for the computer to catch up to what I want it to do.

Another day of manic photo editing here while listening to more NIN and I just found this one. Thought this was funny while chasing.

Trying to edit through 250 gigs worth of scans is a total pain in the ass. But I have got through some of the old tornado stuff and here are a couple images. So what did I find in the photos?

These negs were sitting in a box for up to 10 years in some cases. They are scratched and dirty so I have to go through everything at 12,000 DPI and clean up the scratches, but it is worth it.

This first one is from 2000 over in Wisconsin of all places. It just kept spinning up and trying to put out a funnel before it just died.

This next one if from the 7/14/2003 Searles MN tornado.

Is this not like, um yeah. NO SHIT.
Waiting for Tony to photo shop “Roger” on the top of it 🙂

Here are some photos of the wild dogs that chased me down while I was out chasing this year. I stopped on the side of the road in South Dakota to get a shot of a dying super cell and then these guys came out of nowhere from the house across the highway.

These guys were looking at me like I was their new chew toy and like some crazy horror movie, they kept following me around until I got back in my Jeep after fighting them off and got away with my life…

Okay, so they were not that dangerous, but they were fun to play with while waiting for the storm to do something.

After 3 years of work, sorting, video editing, reviewing, scanning, re scanning, touching up photos, the whole fucking project is almost done. After having a shitty holiday and just staying home to work vs being invited over for left overs at my brothers house, I was able to get a lot of stuff done.

The new WeatherPaparazzi.com will soon be up and running.

Just for the people wondering how many photos I have to review, I did a CHKDSK on my photo drives. Total number of files to be reviewed, 22,092.

This should keep me busy tomorrow.

It was the day before thanksgiving and the lakes were still open…

I did a solo scuba dive in Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis this morning. 

The water temp at 40 feet was 40 degrees.   The temp at the surface was 43 degrees. 

The two piece 5mm wet suit, hood and gloves kept me warm until I had to do the 2 minute safety stop at 15 feet  and could feel the start of hypothermia. 

Oh yeah, what does 40 degree water feel like at 40 feet on bare skin?  It feels like the parts of your face that are exposed are burning off with a blow torch.  Otherwise the space suit kept me warm as long as I kept moving around.

Next time I’m going to have to find a buddy to go diving with because this shit is getting dangerous at those temps.   I might do the Crosby Mine pits this weekend and go down to over 80 feet down but first I’m going to need a warmer hood!!!

After thinking I was done with all the scanning, I was not.  When I sat down to start reviewing the scans today, I found some huge streaks in some of the images.  It was nothing on the image itself but the film touching the glass base of the scanner.  I tried to fix it but it is not happening.  So I came up with an idea.  I have a bunch of old Pakon plastic slide mounts for the E6 I used to develop by hand.  So I’m cutting the C41 negs and putting them into slide mounts to try and flatten them out to scan them clean.

So far it looks to be working.  Just set me back by another day. 

On a good note, I heard back from the client today about the 19 hours of footage I sent them.  They will have it all reviewed by next week and let me know which shots they want.  Hoping to sell them at least 45 minutes of video…

Ok, the Pakon trick worked perfect to fix the scanning.  It has flattened the negs out to the point where they scan perfect.  The down side, I have to rescan the stuff and that will take some time.  But at least it looks cool.