Mitch Dobrowner: Pillar Cloud, 2011

Mitch Dobrowner has been chasing storms since 2005. Working with a professional storm chaser, Dobrowner has traveled throughout Western and Midwestern America to capture nature in its full fury. This photograph, taken east of Lewistown, Montana, depicts a spectacular pillar cloud seemingly connecting Earth to sky. The subtle tonal gradations are evidence of Dobrowner’s mastery of black-and-white printing processes, and the sense of awe the image provokes shows Dobrowner to be a worthy heir to Ansel Adams, one of his greatest influences. Making such pictures takes an ever-changing combination of skill and luck. As Dobrowner has noted, he has come to “appreciate the complexity of these . . . massive storms with deep, rotating updrafts that sometimes spawn tornadoes. As a photographer, I always count myself lucky to get to the right place at the right time.”

This image appears in Storms (2013), the first book exclusively dedicated to Dobrowner’s storm photographs.