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By Ed Severson, Arizona Daily Star When the sky flashes, most of us duck for cover. Lightning makes us cringe. We hide indoors. We don't talk on the phone. We don't take showers. We turn off the TV. Can't be too safe. On the other hand, some Tucsonans can't get outside fast enough. Grabbing their cameras and tripods, they head straight toward the flame. They want pictures! Call it a combination of art and lunacy.... So why chase lightning? "It makes you
feel like a teenager" said Adam Graham,44. |
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It's almost like that first time you were in love". Graham, a stand-up comic turned lightning chaser who admits to being "in the middle of an extended mid life crisis," is planning to make a stab at the lightning photo business." If my photos don't sell, I'm going to continue to chase lightning, regardless," he said. Graham, who's worked the crowd at Laff's Comedy Nightclub, said lightning chasing is just like stand-up: "It's unpredictable and exciting." Unpredictable, true, but he does know one thing for sure about it. "The key to good lightning is heat," he said. "The hotter it is, the more it starts to spit out amazing bolts." One favorite area is in Pinal County near Picaho Peak. "If it's going to be, like, 98 (degrees) here, it's going to be 102 or 103 up there," he said. Graham, who recommends "good loud music to keep you awake" for late night chases, said lightning wears him out. "An hour of lightning chasing is like an eight-hour workday," he said. While taking pictures, he has to check constantly to make sure the storm isn't going to bite. "You have to know when to get out," he said. "That's the big one." The other afternoon , he was still high from a recent triumph. "I got 70 lightning shots the other night, a record," he said. "At least 40 cactus shots." He displayed a photo of a saguaro cacti silhouetted against a crooked shower of lightning. "With all the chasing I've done, the best shot I've ever got was 50 feet from my front door," he said. The 1997 photo, taken at around 4:30 a.m. in the North Country Club Road/East Fort Lowell area, features two jagged legs of lightning, crackling with "tendrils" and "veins" seemingly dancing on the roof of a building. "I like those veins against the roof," said Graham, admiring his work. Nothing good lasts forever. He's not looking forward to the end of the monsoons. To him, chasing lightning makes him "feel alive." "I go through what I call photographic depression when I get done with the lightning season," he said. |
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