Monsoons over Downtown

“Dada goes to the office on the moun­tain in the truck to do tai chi and paint the sky.”
–Leo Mirocha (2 years)

These pho­tos are part of an ongo­ing series of views of Tuc­son from Tumamoc Hill. Lawrence Clark Pow­ell (1906−2001), the noted librar­ian and author who lived the last part of his long life in Tuc­son, once com­pared Tumamoc Hill to the acrop­o­lis in Athens. I imag­ine that he meant it in sev­eral ways, the views one can see from a moun­tain within in the city, and the sta­tus of the acrop­o­lis as a cul­tural land­mark and sacred place for tem­ples. I’m lit­er­ally explor­ing that vei­w­point: views of Tuc­son from Tumamoc Hill. Since I am here every day and famil­iar with the place, I am ready for sud­den spe­cial con­di­tions like dra­matic storms.

Speak­ing of storms, I can’t talk enough about the weather. It has a deep emo­tional effect on humans, espe­cially the mon­soons. The rainy sea­son is so dra­matic and beau­ti­ful from this ele­vated view, see­ing it whole, look­ing across at them instead of being immersed in them in the val­ley. I’m almost glad I am spend­ing the sum­mer in town. I saw this view com­ing from my office win­dow and rushed out with the giga­pan to a high over­look up the road a piece. I knew some­thing spe­cial was brew­ing – the sun was going down directly behind me light­ing up the fore­ground, good light­ing con­di­tions for land­scape paint­ing, and for see­ing a rain­bow. Light­ning flashed, but did not show on any of the frames.

Quite high on a rush of adren­a­line and a surge of dopamine – the hor­mones found to sat­u­rate the brains of love-​struck mam­mals – I tried to remem­ber the sequence of tech­ni­cal details for fid­dling with the robot gear. The scene was huge, get­ting the whole arc of the rain­bow would take luck because the rain was rapidly approach­ing push­ing a dust storm ahead of it. I could already feel the wind reach­ing the Hill.

The first giga­pan did not get all of the view in. It was 56 frames and took about 10 min­utes to make. (You can click these to enlarge them)

I tore the cam­era off of the robot and tried a sequence hand-​held. It took a lot of pro­cess­ing, this final result is more like a paint­ing. The view was still not large enough, but I had to grab my gear and run for it, remem­ber­ing the recent expe­ri­ence that drowned my old Nikon. Rain­drops were hit­ting my lens.

I took the photo below in 9 frames with the Giga­pan and stitched it together. I think this per­spec­tive is more real­is­tic and less dis­torted than if this scene was taken with an extreme wide angle. Some of the inter­est to me is cre­at­ing an image that is larger than the angle of view of the human eye. One has to move one’s eyes about, explor­ing teh pic­ture the way you would out­doors in a land­scape. To me, there is an expanded feel­ing about it, see­ing a larger piece of the world than we usu­ally see in one frame.

On the day I took teh mon­soon rain­bow pho­tographs, the Hill was drenched with water. A group of hik­ers was hud­dling against the garage for shel­ter and I invited them inside. One, whose name I for­get, said he was a light­ning pho­tog­ra­pher. I had always won­dered how much luck was involved in get­ting light­ning pho­tographs dur­ing day­light times. It turns out that you do need luck, but can increase the odds. He told me one of his tech­niques was to take a lot of pho­tos, putting his cam­era on burst mode. If you spend some time look­ing at teh storm, you usu­ally can count the inter­val between light­ning strikes.It may take 30 sec­onds, for instance, between strikes for each charge to build up.

I didn’t have all of his cam­era set­tings on the point-​and-​shoot from the giga­pan, but I took a lot of pho­tos until I cap­tured my own per­sonal light­ning bolt.

I can only imag­ine the emo­tional effect on ancient peo­ple stand­ing on the Tumamoc sum­mit watch­ing the mon­soon drama. Beside ensur­ing their sur­vival, watch­ing these rains was prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of enter­tain­ment, bringer of tid­ings of great joy, appre­ci­a­tion of beauty, and for the rain­mak­ers, the sat­is­fac­tion of a job well done.