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Storm Chasing and Media Coverage Ethics


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Im thinking this, keep the scientific storm chasers at a safe distance like 5 miles away and send in a remote control drone with a camera and equipment into the tornado to be safe something like TIV or the Dominator with remote controls, but the major problem will be costs,

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I strongly agree with most of this. Personally, I've always prioritized quality shots, and will stop short of "extreme close range" encounters so that I can use a tripod and not shoot out of a moving car. However, I also focus more on stills than video (didn't even start shooting video until last year). My hunch is that others with my disposition are often also still photographers, ala Mike Hollingshead and Mike Umscheid. There's this sort of natural filtering process whereby those of us who do stills are more conservative with our positioning and try to maintain a view of the structure (or at least the RFD cut when a tornado is occurring), while those who don't do stills at all and just shoot video continue racing down bumpy dirt roads to get uber close. This is unfortunate for fans of "quality" video, like Martin Lisuis's work. (In fact, I believe he shot the Hoover video, and he also had jaw-dropping footage from 11/7/11 in SW OK).

 

Your last bit about Rozel stings, because I was regrettably guilty of shooting through wipers with my dash-mounted camcorder. I had a stationary shot of the whole life cycle from ~3 miles away, but was too worried about getting good, tripoded stills to "waste time" setting up another tripod outside the vehicle for my camcorder. (If I'd known it would last 20 minutes, I certainly would have sacrificed 45 seconds of stills to do that at the beginning). Meanwhile, some of my video-focused friends got much closer, but were also bumping down bad roads for most of it and shooting out the window. If only I had four hands.

 

Well, that's understandable. If you're focusing on still photography then of course you're not going to have time for quality video. Just like if I was chasing, then I'd probably make sure that the video was nice but then take pot shots with my camera, or vice versa depending on what I wanted. Trying to focus on both is just going to end up hurting the quality of both. And you're absolutely right about still photographers being more conservative and giving thought to angles, lighting, etc. I think that just comes with the territory. I think it's because photography has more of an emphasis on art and composition while videography is more looked at as simply capturing things.

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Anyone know what exactly went wrong? I'm assuming they were deploying probes or something when the tornado took that abrupt left turn. I didn't know the guys but they seemed like pretty humble nice guys and Tim seemed to really want to understand tornadoes. It's a tragic loss. 

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Anyone know what exactly went wrong? I'm assuming they were deploying probes or something when the tornado took that abrupt left turn. I didn't know the guys but they seemed like pretty humble nice guys and Tim seemed to really want to understand tornadoes. It's a tragic loss. 

What I first noticed about this storm is that it had circulations and suction funnels over a very broad area. It was bouncing them everywhere, like nothing I'd ever seen. Most likely, they were blindsided by one of these bouncing funnels, which appear to have been occurring some distance out from the main circulation. It almost looked to me like the strong inflows were also spinning up their own funnels. I almost wish I was there to see this crazy storm myself, but I'm glad I wasn't.

 

This is absolutely tragic news, no doubt about it.

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Was Tim chasing in this vehicle on Friday? This is his new Lightning Truck. 

 

I'm not trying to speculate or do this in bad taste. I will remove this post if it is found offensive.

 

I was unaware that Tim had a new chasing vehicle - but it makes sense - probably to protect some of the instruments from hail/etc.

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Now that I've watched KFOR's coverage just now, which I refused to yesterday, I see that Reed needs to be blamed just as much as Mike Morgan. I counted at least 4 times he said either get underground, or get south, along with the 3 separate times I heard Mike Morgan say it. And Reed said it as the hook echo was moving THROUGH downtown OKC, not west of it, it was in the city when he kept yelling it. No excuse.

Those two make a TERRIBLE package.  They're both prone to over reacting and calling everything "huge" and "violent"...pretty annoying really.  And yea advising people to go South as the storms started drifting south was crazy....

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Sorry to hear the news. Something must have went terribly wrong because they were true scientists and not thrill seekers or ones who care about getting videos.

My guess is that satellite vortex got him or it was when the storm barreled straight south and caught a LOT of people off guard :(

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