David Blanchard has been photographing the weather and outdoor environment for more than four decades. He got his start as a photographer for a weather research project in Florida in the mid-1970s. His job was to photodocument the thunderstorms during the course of the day so that there would be a visual record to accompany the scientific data collected.
From these simple beginnings, David has continued to photograph the sky. He has amassed a large number of photographs displaying the many moods of the weather. His photographic specialization has remained thunderstorms and severe weather, including hailstorms and tornadoes.
After leaving Florida for Colorado in the early 1980s, he began to photograph the Colorado backcountry on many of his backpacking and hiking trips. Now he finds himself in Arizona which presents a new challenge and opportunity for sky, landscape, and recreational photographs.
The photographer has had many of his weather and cloud photographs published in magazines and books. His work has appeared in
- Weatherwise (May-June 1998)
- SIRS Year in Review (1998)
- Audobon Field Guide to Weather
- SkyWatch: The Western Weather Guide
- World Meteorological Organization: International Cloud Atlas.
- Chasing Tornadoes
- Discover Magazine (July 2003)
- THE MARTIAN CLIMATE REVISITED: Atmosphere and Environment of a Desert Planet
- Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey
- Meteorology: Understanding the Atmosphere
- Grand Canyon National Park 100 Views
- Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life
“What I most enjoy about photographing the weather and clouds is that there will rarely, if ever, be two identical situations. Every cloud is different and even after many years of photographing the sky, I have few images that are duplicates. It also means that there are many cloud formations that I haven’t yet experienced and I look forward to seeing those…”