If you’ve got a love and passion for photography, and a feel for your camera gear and settings, yet your images still fall short–The Passionate Photographer will help you close that disappointing and frustrating gap between the images you thought you took and the images you actually got. This book will help you determine what you want to say with your photography, then translate those thoughts and feelings into strong images. It is both a source of inspiration and a practical guide, as photographer Steve Simon distills 30 years of photographic obsession into the ten crucial steps every photographer needs to take in order to become great at their passion. Simon’s practical tips and advice are immediately actionable–designed to accelerate your progress toward becoming the photographer you know you can be. Core concepts include: - The power of working on personal projects to fuel your passion and vision - Shooting a large and targeted volume of work, which leads to a technical competence that lets your creativity soar - Learning to focus your concentration as you shoot, and move outside your comfort zone, past your fears toward the next great image - Strategies for approaching strangers to create successful portraits - How to edit your own work and seek second opinions to identify strengths and weaknesses, offering opportunities for growth and improvement with a goal of sharing your work with the world - The critical need to follow, see, and capture the light around you Along the way, Simon offers inspiration with “Lessons Learned” culled from his own extensive experience and archive of photojournalism and personal projects, as well as images and stories from acclaimed photographers. If you’re ready to be inspired and challenge yourself to take your photography to the next level, The Passionate Photographer provides ideas and creative solutions to transform that passion into images that convey your unique personal vision.

What in the world is a tornado? In this age of extreme weather, this newly updated edition of Gail Gibbons' informative introduction to tornadoes, with safety tips included, answers that question. Tornadoes form when hot, humid air rises from the ground and meets with the cooler, denser air that is falling back to Earth. The two airstreams begin to swirl, pulling in more and more air to form a funnel-shaped cloud. The winds can swirl faster than 261 miles per hour! Newly revised and vetted by weather experts from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, Tornadoes is an accessible introduction to this fascinating phenomenon. Using her praised combination of clear text and detailed illustrations, Gail Gibbons shares more than fifty tornado facts. . . . including how tornadoes form, the scale used for classifying them, and the safest places to go in case one should happen near you. Featuring simple, kid-friendly text, colorful paintings, and well-labeled diagrams, Gail Gibbons' nonfiction titles have been called ""staples of any collection" (Kirkus Reviews) and offer clear, accessible introductions to complex topics for young readers beginning to explore the world.

On the evening of June 20, 1957, a tornado ripped through Fargo, North Dakota. It caused the deaths of seven children and five adults and left 116 injured. The tornado destroyed 359 buildings and damaged 2,543 more. The nine-mile path of destruction covered over 66 blocks in town, leaving more than 2,000 people homeless and causing approximately $20 million worth of damage. Following the tornado, first responders quickly united to aid those in need, setting up disaster headquarters, finding shelter for over 600 people, and distributing more than 100 tons of clothing and bedding. Dr. Tetsuya Fujita, a meteorologist, studied the Fargo tornado when creating the Fujita scale (F-scale) and later rated it an F5, the most destructive rating. Images of America: 1957 Fargo Tornado, shines a light on the tornado's destruction and the rebuilding of a united and vibrant community.

From surreal skyscapes to wholesale destruction: the most dramatic scenes from the natural world. The destructive power of nature has always been a source of fear and fascination, and never more so than now, when climate change and extreme weather conditions are constantly in the news. Across the central United States, the infamous storms of Tornado Alley are fueled by the collision of cold fronts from Canada and warm fronts from the Gulf of Mexico. People have been chasing these storms for decades in pursuit of thrilling experiences, but now a new generation of storm chasers is combining scientific knowledge with powerful images. This book follows Mike Hollingshead and Eric Nguyen on seventeen chases through Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, illustrating the unfolding events with sequential shots and a running commentary by the chasers themselves. These spectacular storm portfolios are expanded with special features on weather phenomena like hail and mammatus clouds plus insights into forecasting and research.

Eric Meola became interested in storms during a 1977 road trip across Nevada to photograph an album cover for musician Bruce Springsteen. While driving on a long dirt road in the desert they encountered a violent storm, and Springsteen wrote a song about the experience called 'The Promised Land'. Meola was transfixed as well by the display of nature's fury: "I always wanted to go back to that day when we drove up on a hilltop and watched as lightning revealed the valley floor." Meola began to photograph the tornadic storms of the Great Plains - the area in America's heartland west of the 98th meridian and east of the Rockies. Driving through the area known as Tornado Alley - from the Rio Grande in southern Texas, north to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan - he photographed a forbidding landscape where atmospheric instability collides with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and spectacular cumulonimbus clouds form at twilight. Over a period of several years he documented a landscape of elemental forces, where immense storms percolate miles above the ground, rotating with energy until tornadoes spin on the horizon. And he discovered a country of haunting beauty where the wail of coyotes and the glow of constellations fill the prairie's void with simple graces. Fierce Beauty: Storms of the Great Plains includes more than one hundred photographs made during six seasons of tornadoes, lightning, dust storms, and storm phenomena, as well as a detailed and vivid description of a moment-by-moment close encounter with a cataclysmic tornado by renowned storm chaser and meteorologist William T. Reid. AUTHOR: Eric Meola studied photography at the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University, and graduated with a BA degree in English Literature. Meola's photographs are included in the archive of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the International Center of Photography in New York City, and the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. His previous books include Born to Run: The Unseen Photos (Insight Editions, 2006), and INDIA: In Word & Image (Welcome Books, 2008). He has won numerous awards, including the 'Advertising Photographer of the Year' award in 1986 from the American Society of Media Photographers. In 2014, he received the 'Power of the Image' George Eastman award as part of ceremonies and an exhibition in Beijing, China. Eric and his wife, photographer Joanna McCarthy, live in Sagaponack, New York, on the south shore of Long Island. SELLING POINTS: * Features more than 100 detailed and atmospheric photographs of tornadoes, lightning, dust storms, and storm phenomena taken during four decades of personal trips to the Great Plains and during six seasons of chasing storms, from 1977 to 2019 * Chronicles Eric Meola's initiation into storm chasing during a trip to Nevada with Bruce Springsteen in the late 1970s to make photographs that eventually would be used on Springsteen's album The Promise, and which he documented in the song 'The Promised Land' * Features several extracts of storm-chasing experiences by renowned storm chasers and meteorologists, such as Charles Chuck Doswell III, Chris Gullikson, and William T. Reid * An extensive recommended reading list of books includes Great Plains biographical texts; historical references, including social analysis and commentary on indigenous culture, pioneer settlements, and geographical references to the Great Plains; as well as literary fiction titles and works describing storms and tornadoes, and other meteorological themes * Meola's photographs of storms have been featured in Time, Outside Online, Communication Arts, and the Wall Street Journal 100 colour photographs

June 4, 1958, was a muggy and breezy day in western Wisconsin. Across central Minnesota, severe weather was brewing. In the early afternoon, the Minnesota storms crossed the border into Wisconsin. As farmers were tending to milking chores and families were wrapping up the workday and sitting down to supper, one of the worst tornadoes in Wisconsin's history touched down. At 7:07 p.m., what had been multiple, smaller tornadoes combined into one massive F5 tornado that ripped through the village of Colfax, leaving a path of death and destruction that would require months of recovery. In Colfax, 12 people were killed, hundreds were injured, and millions of dollars in damage was done to property. However, in the wake of the storm, a community and its neighbors came together as one to care for the survivors and begin the process of healing and rebuilding.

"Pictorial book that chronicles the devastation wrought by the tornado that hit the city of Joplin, Missouri and the indomitable spirit of the citizens as they recover and rebuild." --publisher website