One of the weirdest aspects of shooting storms is that by the time that they arrive, the shooting is done. For about seventeen reasons, storm photography should be done from miles away from the actual storms. Depending on your perspective, the most compelling of these reasons is A) safety, or B) photos involving rain often appear out-of-focus.

I love this image of the storm moving through downtown Chicago. However, if you look towards the right of the photo, you’ll notice it doesn’t look as crisp as the left side. The Sears Tower (Willis Tower) isn’t actually out of focus, it’s being rained upon. This adds a degree of immediacy to this picture that I didn’t see in the photos I had taken just prior.

Two minutes later, the rain began pelting the Hancock Building observatory deck. Five minutes after that, the building was encased in clouds; visibility was so poor you couldn’t even seen the tops of the buildings immediately to the north of the Hancock Building.