Fort Collins Stormchaser Turns Severe Weather Into Art At Stanley Arts Festival

AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) - When severe weather hits, stormchasers flock to Colorado in hopes of capturing images of the wild weather. One of those stormchasers is a Fort Collins-based artist who is displaying their work at the Stanley Arts Festival this weekend.

(credit: CBS)

"I photograph the weather so instead of doing landscapes, I do skyscapes," said David Mayhew.

He lives to capture Colorado through the lens of his Sony camera.

David Mayhew (credit: CBS)

"You have the drama of severe weather all the way through to a beautiful sunset, the majesty of the night skies as well, the complete palate of weather," he said.

The material he displays the photographs on, helps bring out the rich texture of color and contrast replete in Colorado skies.

A tornado near Prospect Valley in 2019. (credit: David Mayhew)

"The way that I print them, they're on aluminum so they actually reflect light because when you see things in nature you see reflected light and this kind of simulates that, so anything with sunset colors really has a natural glow on it."

Of all of the subjects Colorado has to offer, David's passion is severe weather.

"One of my favorite things to do, especially here in Colorado, is to get off the main roads, hit the dirt roads, crank up the tunes, just follow the storms and look for some great subjects."

Like one storm cell he spotted on the Colorado plains.

A shelf cloud from a tornado-warned storm sweeps over an abandoned house near Haxtun. (credit: David Mayhew)

"I saw the layering of the clouds from underneath, so I had to race ahead to get ahead of it, to get a wide shot to get all the detail of the structure of that storm."

(credit: CBS)

Colorado's severe weather season should continue to provide the former design engineer from England plenty of subjects worth capturing for years to come.

(credit: CBS)

PHOTO GALLERY: Stanley Arts Festival In Denver

More of David's photography can be found at www.DavidMayhewPhotography.com.

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