MITCH DOBROWNER

Mitch Dobrowner

“I owe much to the great photographers
of the past, especially Ansel Adams.
The whole of nature is my playground
and I respect it. I seek out storms and tornadoes
on the American plains.“

Mitch Dobrowner

When we see a tornado, our reflex is to run for cover. Or to lock ourselves in our cellar. No so for Mitch Dobrowner, who heads straight for the storm. Where his fellow wildlife photographers track birds and mammals, he hunts down vortexes, storm supercells and other severe weather phenomena. “They take on so many different aspects, faces and personalities; I’m in awe watching them,” explains the photographer who first started taking pictures as a teenager, but later set his camera aside until 2005 while he raised his family. “It’s watching Mother Nature at her finest. My only hope is that my images do justice to these amazing phenomena of nature.”

It’s a passion that comes with an element of danger. Dobrowner is aware of the risks involved, but chooses to get as close as he can to the vortexes to further his understanding of these phenomena. In 2010, in Wyoming, he got caught in a hailstorm. “We were being chased by the storm – instead of us chasing after it.” The incident didn’t discourage him, as he has continued to track down the nastiest storms and weather conditions for almost two decades. “My job is to get to the right place at the right time, then let nature show itself,” he says. He has even been honoured by Google for his use of their technology in his weather quests.

His systematic use of black and white to accentuate the harshness of the storms stems from his admiration for Ansel Adams – another master of American landscape photography. An approach that won him the Iris d’Or at the Sony World Photography Awards in 2012. Despite his success and the esteem he has gained, Mitch Dobrowner refuses to be labelled a “storm chaser”: “I don’t like to put things in boxes. I’m just a landscape photographer.”