Boris Jordan is a storm chaser. He can catch the right moment of the falling of lightning or the beautiful way in which the colors of the sky change. Adrenaline, fun
but also fear are the most common feelings a storm chaser can experience when he looks at the power and beauty of nature.
In front of such beautiful events, a man can only admire how precious and unique the nature is.
Tell me something about you, how was your passion for the photography born?
My name is Boris Jordan and I am a storm chaser and landscape photographer living in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. My first contact with a DSLR camera was in 2011, when my son was born. At the beginning I just wanted to take better photos of my family. But soon I became bored of using the camera in automatic mode as I am a very curious person. I started to study how different camera settings affect the final picture and I was fascinated by how many capabilities a modern camera can provide. As time goes on I was more and more often outside shooting different motifs and photography slowly captivated me. Being at interesting locations and trying to shoot a photo, which I built in my head was my way to escape the routine of everyday life.
Why did you choose to photograph nature and its phenomenon such as storms?
At the beginning, I tried to photograph different scenes, like cityscapes, animals or people. Then I realized that what attracts me the most is shooting landscapes in combination with natural processes like sunrise, fog or storms. I was always a person who loved to spend time in nature far away from crowds and noises of cities. This is the reason why landscape photography is perfect for me. Storms have always fascinated me and I have even tried to shoot lightning strikes with a small analogue compact camera when I was a child, but, of course, I never succeeded. Now, after I learned the photography technique of long exposure, I wanted to fulfil my long-held dream of catching a lightning. So, during the following years I just waited for storms to come to my hometown at night. This didn’t happen very often but anyway I was very happy with the results.
One day, on 02 July 2013, a thunderstorm missed Frankfurt just by few kilometres and I decided to follow it by car. Finally, after an Hour and about 120 km, I got closer to the cell. Here on the field, I was able to shoot for about 20 min and the cell died finally. It looked like the storm waited for me whole the long way to let me photograph its beauty. I was really blown away by final results and I realized that I needed to be more active to get more storms and more motifs. I will remember this day forever as it was my first real storm chase. (Photo 1) After this I started to research how to catch storms and I found out that there is a huge community of storm chasers, who driving in teams across Germany and Europe. I finally joined a team and now I was able to drive longer distances for almost every interesting weather setup and could learn a lot about weather, storm forecasting and chasing strategies from more experienced colleagues.
