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Electric Sky UK Photography by Mark Seltzer BSc FRMetS RMet (Registered Meteorologist)  11th June 2023 Action shot from the Didcot severe thunderstorm chase Welcome to my personal website featuring thunderstorm and weather photography/videography, including technical write-ups. This website serves as my primary hub to find all my stuff, as much of it is scattered across other public places, such as Youtube Channel, Facebook page and Twitter (X). With the social media, I'm not interested in blind sensationalism or click-baits, and focus more on highlighting interesting points and answering questions. Apart from a few ads on the site and currently un-monetised ads on Youtube vids, this is a non-profit exercise and purely personal interest. In fact it costs me a couple of hundred a year to run all this from my own back pocket, especially now I've just installed an expensive SSL certificate so Google actually likes me! Who am I? I am a registered time-served Meteorologist. Since becoming incredibly inspired by thunderstorms and learning about the meteorology aged 10, I endeavoured to continue finding truth in the (often unproven) science, and experience the reality by observing through the lens of a camera. By observing directly, most of my "textbook" knowledge has been fortified and expanded upon. Since then, I followed the career path of Meteorology and remain in that profession today. Now all I see when I look up at the sky is the MatrixTM code, and Navier Stokes equations swirling around the bubble bath. I must admit, knowing the how and why has pretty much ruined the wonder I once had as a 10 year old...but the skies never cease to impress me. Nor do the computer models that predict such a chaotic dance. I am based in the UK, where the meteorology is often somewhat muted and thunderstorm activity is rather infrequent due to our often dynamic and cool maritime weather influence, especially in the west where I live. For this reason, a bit of thunder is usually an exciting event for us Brits; "Newsflash! One strike of lightning!". But although our weather is unlikely to impress many continental and hotter climate dwellers, I aim to bring the best (of the worst) we've got to offer. Most of the artwork on this website is my own footage from the UK, for example. If you know where and when to look, you can snoop out some real gold. Why do I take footage of thunderstorms ?One is not a true "weather-nut" unless their face is pressed up against a window during a thunderstorm, or measuring the depth of snow, the size of hail, or staring at weather data until your eyes bleed to come up with a 1% "Once you've seen one storm, you've seen them all.." ...as someone once said to me. How wrong that statement is. Take a look at my range of footage and you'll see that they are all indeed unique in most aspects. Every cloud is different, every lightning is different, every thunder is different. Every experience is different. You never quite know what you'll see and uncover next. My a nalysisTo understand the dynamics of what is happening, most of my pages, posts and online videos offer explanations, rather than "I'll just leave this here with no supporting information and hope it goes viral". That's not what this is about. I learnt much about how thunderstorms worked in my early teens when I acquired a video camera (1997) and filmed every thunderstorm that came along and studied the footage. Since 2007, I trained as a Meteorologist which has been my profession ever since, so hopefully my analysis and theory you read will be just. My footage style I try and document every aspect of a thunderstorm if possible, where lightning, thunder, and cloud development/structure are my favoured goals, including timelapses and audio. I feel other chasers often forget about the importance of the thunder and ambient sounds, so I rarely speak on my videography and try and offer the highest quality audio using a variety of methods. The latter enables the viewer to absorb the ambience, and also for me to study the thunder since a lot can be revealed about the characteristics of the lightning, and surrounding environment, just by listening to the thunder, like a wolf. If I was to be presented with a tornadic storm, I make sure non-tornadic aspects are also documented, especially CG lightning barrages. Observing absolutely everything reveals many secrets of the workings of nature. Regarding photography, I use only use Adobe Lightroom to improve the raw parameters, and never Photoshop since I believe the pixels are only ever allowed to be altered in their original arrangement, and never ever rearranged to make a composite or false picture. So no "art", only natural, so everything you see from me happened as you would have seen it. My content The core of content is my thunderstorm videography, plus a mix of screengrabs and higher-resolution pictures. I am currently deliberating the best way to show my normal "weather" photography over the years, whether it be hosting on here or in Flikr/Getty Images, so currently that section of the site is still "under construction". I also have a section of theory and explainers I'm planning on building up in the coming years. You will get the impression once you trawl through a more fulfilled storm archive, that up until 2007 I had plenty of time on my hands. Clearly a change of lifestyle and country location happened in 2007 which led to less frequent footage thereon. In Macclesfield I had the advantage of living in what is known as the "Cheshire Gap" where land convergence or Welsh mountain lee-storms develop. I also had a cracking view being positioned on the top of a hill, so footage was plentiful. Since moving to Devon and becoming an adult, life has inevitably got very busy together with the fact decent "cold-air" thunderstorms are much rarer down here. The latter is because Devon is surrounded by cold ocean with not much landmass from key directions (south through to northwest) as it sticks out westwards into the Atlantic away from the mainland like an island of it's own. So the weather here tends to be very "flat" throughout the year. I have, however, been to the States a few times chasing, and still endeavour to document as many thunderstorms as Devon has to offer, so fresh footage is still happening. Having the freedom to actually chase is currently a challenge, but not impossible.
What's to come? I hope you enjoy the website and content, and please feel free to follow my ventures through the eye of a camera on Youtube, Facebook or Twitter.Mark Seltzer
My Photography Equipment
(Chronological)
Nikon D610 DSLR (2014-Now)
Publications
Spike in Asthma Healthcare Presentations in Eastern
England during June 2021 (Thunderstorm
Asthma)
Supporters Special thanks to UK Weather Chase for supporting the promotion of my work. Go and check out their activities!
© Mark Seltzer www.electricsky.co.uk |
