5 Weeks Of Storm Video In 5 Minutes: Jeff Boyce Edge Of Stability

I want to introduce you to a guy I would love to meet. Jeff Boyce is a police officer, adventurer, and computer geek. But what may trump all of that is his photography. Over a five week period in May and June 2015, he compiled over 70,000 photos observing storm formation and more. Some days he got 8,000 pics. This was compressed into a time lapse video that will capture your imagination.

Where did he shoot? The already picturesque mountainous west: California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and into Manitoba, Canada.

Dedication: Most of this time was spent car-camping in his truck. He had removed the back seat and built a sleeping platform and storage compartments. Every few days he got a hotel room. Talk about living for what you love. Wow!

At first glance, he won me over and will you too as well. My favorite thing about this guy is his title Negative Tilt Photography. He took a meteorological term of instability (negative tilted trough) that can bring our region some great coastal winter storms. OK, he is from California and probably didn’t intend that. But the double entendre of negative, is also a critical part of old school photography. Boyce only shoots in digital, but respects the history and art of taking pictures of nature. He earned my respect and crushed it here! Enjoy and let me know what you think:

Edge of Stability Video: Jeff Boyce

In his own words:

As far as the technical parts of how I produced the video: I used two Canon 6D’s paired with a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8, Rokinon 24mm f/1.4, Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8, Tamron 70-300 f/4.5-5.6, and a Canon 50mm f/1.8. I used a Vanguard Alta Pro 263AGH Tripod with a GH-100 Grip Head, and it worked great. When doing two sequences at once, the second camera sat on a cheaper and more frustrating tripod I picked up from Costco a year earlier. I installed “Magic Lantern” software onto my cameras which allowed me to use an internal intervalometer and not have to purchase two extra external devices. “Magic Lantern”, a sort of software hack on the camera, came with a number of issues – but it got the job done and did it well. The timelapse sequences were recorded with a RAW photo taken between every 2 seconds to every minute. The type of shot, movement in what I was photographing, and lightning conditions all played into this. Rapidly evolving supercell thunderstorms were recorded every 2 seconds in order to capture as much detail as possible and to create the longest clip in the shortest amount of time. On the other hand, I would leave my cameras on a mountainside exposing the Milky Way all night long, and might set the cameras to record a 20 second exposure every minute until the batteries ran out.

See more from Jeff Boyce at Negative Tilt Photography

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