Tag: Jim Reed

It’s been raining three days in a row and sometimes heavily:

Finally, northern Illinois is beginning to emerge from the drought.
It’s the perfect weather for contemplation and handling details for my upcoming storm chase trip. During the off-season, I’ve done lots of reading, ingesting books like Tim Vazquez’s “Weather Radar Handbook” (ORANGE BOOK).

In anticipation of chasing for ten days with famed storm photographer Jim Reed, I read “STORM CHASER: A Photographer’s Journey”.

I had intended to go through it over several days, but read through it in a single sitting (unlike the ORANGE BOOK, which I’ve been nibbling at for weeks). I felt it would be beneficial to read Jim’s book to better understand him and his guiding principals of storm photography.

As it turns out, Jim and I have had interesting parallels in our lives:

	Jim Reed	Lisa Beal	REMARKS
Born	Springfield, Illinois	Rockford, Illinois	Also close to the same age
Raised in Midwest?	Yup	Yup	_
Non-traditional family	Raised by single mom	One of three adopted children. Raised by almost-single mom until 10. (Dad traveled 5-6 days a week.)	We may have watched the Brady Bunch, but we were not members!
1st memorable storm	Hurricane Camille (with mom)	Belvidere, IL tornado (with dad)	Dominant parent present during first memorable storm experience gave a sense that “everything’s going to be OK” (and it was).
Moved from Midwest	to West Coast (California)	to East Coast (to New York)	Off to the big city!
Returned to Midwest	Kansas	Illinois	Returned after college in both cases
Einstein connection	Ja!	Ja!	God may not play dice with the universe, but he seems to be good at poker.  I remember this during storm chases!
1960s TV connection	Gilligan’s Island	Gilligan’s Island	Theory: the seven characters on Gilligan’s Island represent the Seven Deadly Sins.  (What would Dawn Wells think of that?)
Dedicated chase vehicle	Ford Explorer (as of 2006)	Chrysler Town&Country (from 2011-date)	_
Seen lots of tornadoes	40+	about 30 (I’m re-checking)	Easily half of those I’ve seen were with Tempest Tours. Saw 6 on 10 May 2004 afternoon near Limon, Colorado. (“Thank you, Dr. Weberpal!”)
Winter photography experience	First chapter in the book captures this	Several photos from Antarctica used on Oprah for Jerri Nielsen’s appearance.	Jim will be supplying 2013 Tempest Tour 2B guests with signed copies of his book during the tour!
Camera collection	Nikon-sanctioned photographer	Started with Pentax while working for the Antarctic Program	OK, Nikon! I’m tired of Pentax stuff being ‘niche gear’ that’s both expensive AND hard to find.

We’ll have plenty to talk about on the trip. I’ll have to remind myself that there will be a dozen people vying for his time, including Jim Reed.

To hear Jim speak about our  trip, check out this YouTube video ( 2:14-):

Extended Interview: Jim Reed, extreme weather photographer (KRCG)