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00:00Welcome to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm your host Jeff Cornish. We go beyond the
00:16forecast to give you the how and why on all the cool and interesting things that you've
00:20wondered about and wanted to ask about in weather, space and science. Today we're talking
00:25about meteorology and weather photography, even some wildlife photography too, and the
00:29connection between the two. I'm pleased to introduce to you, joining us today is meteorologist
00:35and photographer and a good friend of mine, Ross Ellett. Ross and I work together in Toledo,
00:39Ohio. Ross has done a tremendous job over the past decade as the morning meteorologist
00:43at 13 ABC there in Toledo, Ohio. So Ross, it's great to see you again. You've taken
00:49some amazing photographs across the country and internationally as well. You've had a
00:53great career as a meteorologist for 20 plus years as well. So Ross, thanks again for
00:58joining us. You know, thanks Jeff. It's good seeing you again and I'm glad things are going
01:03well for you there in Pennsylvania. And likewise for you in Toledo. Ross is an excellent follow
01:08by the way on Facebook if you look him up, Ross Ellett. And Ross, I know that you've
01:13done a tremendous job combining your passion for the weather with photography many years
01:17ago. So how did you first get interested in photography and specifically taking photos
01:22of weather related things? So I kind of liked photography, you know, when I was in high
01:29school and early part of college, but lighting was something that I was really fascinated
01:34with and I was really frustrated with how difficult it was to take a lighting photograph.
01:40And so I started doing some research and this is back in the film era and there was an intern.
01:46We're both interning at a TV station. He was a meteorology intern there at the time as
01:51well. And I remember him saying, if you just get a camera that has a B function, I had
01:55no idea what that was, which stands for bald function. He said, I've learned you can take
02:00a picture of lightning. And so I was like, okay. So I started looking around, got a $50
02:06camera off of eBay and started playing around with it. Made a lot of mistakes, but that
02:10was kind of the start of it. And it was a lot of fun to kind of be able to capture something
02:14that you see in literally a fraction of a second, but it's really kind of hard to make
02:19out what was going on. So it was great to kind of freeze that moment in time.
02:23And Ross, your background as a meteorologist, you've worked in various parts of the country,
02:27in the South and in the Appalachians and in Northwest Ohio. I know that that is deeply
02:32connected to your photography. Are there ways that you can leverage your passion for meteorology
02:38to get a better shot? And is there a connection between the two?
02:41Yeah, I love, I love kind of taking that, you know, that knowledge and then try to figure
02:47out kind of how to set that up. Right. So it might be something as simple as, all right,
02:51we got the ingredients for fog and it might be an extra special sunrise, you know, near
02:54a Creek or something like that. But, but yeah, when it comes to the lighting and, or something
03:01as simple as just knowing, and this is something I'll mention on, on TV a lot of the times
03:06too, you know, I'm a morning meteorologist. And so if we've got high clouds coming in,
03:10the sun's coming up, you know, it's going to be a good sunrise. And, you know, you make
03:13mention of that. And I think folks appreciate that. And that was some of the knowledge that
03:17I'll use to try to get out and get that right photograph. But, but yeah, also when it comes
03:21to thunderstorms and so forth, just kind of looking it up, okay, what part of the storm
03:25do I need to be on? Where's the lighting going to be the best? And try to use that knowledge
03:30to the best of my ability. It doesn't always work out, but again, try to use that information
03:35the best I can.
03:36And you mentioned that lightning was what initially got you interested in weather photography.
03:42Is there a favorite type of weather event that you like shooting the most now? Is it
03:45still lightning or is there something else?
03:48Lightning's right there, number one. I'd say lightning and then the northern lights. So
03:52lightning was like the first thing, right? That really kind of, I had absolutely no idea
03:58really what the northern lights were. I mean, I kind of vaguely knew, kind of heard about
04:02them, but it wasn't until I think it was about another six months after I had that camera
04:08that, and actually we're, you know, we just passed like the 21 year mark of this. This
04:13was 2003, the big Halloween super storms there, where there was a bunch of solar flares
04:19and it produced these big G5 storms, be extreme geomagnetic storms here on earth and produce
04:25the northern lights all over the place. So I kind of stumbled out with my camera, this,
04:29you know, $50 film camera and set it up again. I have really no idea what I was doing, but
04:34then sort of taking some shots with that, with the northern light. So both of those,
04:38I became almost addicted to, if you want to think of it that way, lightning and Aurora
04:42photography. I mean, there's a lot of things I love, nature photography, anything weather
04:45related, wildlife photography, but when it comes to the northern lights, I'd say lightning
04:50photography and even like deep space, night sky stuff. I really love all of that.
04:55And I know that you've worked in West Virginia, Arkansas, covering a little bit of Oklahoma,
05:00Ohio, central Ohio, Northwest Ohio, covering some of the Southeast Michigan, but you've
05:04been to all 50 states. So where do you find the most interesting weather?
05:09Oh, that's a good one. Most interesting weather. So there are two states that I like the most
05:14when it comes to the type of photography that I, that I'm seeking out the most. Right.
05:18And so I just mentioned lightning and the northern light. So obviously I'm not going
05:21to get the northern lights too often, say in the Southern part of the country, but I
05:24can get those storms. And we think of Florida as being the lightning capital of the United
05:29States. But if the terminology that some photographers use in the Southwest, as they mentioned, Arizona
05:36is the lightning photography capital of the world. And there's a reason why you don't
05:41get as much lightning, but you still get a quite a bit of it in those monsoonal storms
05:44in the summertime, late July and going into August in particular, but it's like the right
05:49combo. They're isolated storms and you have so much drier around it. And you can visually
05:54see so much more there than what you can say where I'm at here in Ohio or back in Florida
05:59where there's just so much rain and humidity and moisture that kind of, you know, leads
06:04to not being able to see as much fine detail with it. So I love Arizona and I love Alaska.
06:08Alaska, there's a lot of things there to photograph, a lot of stuff, a wild place, but the northern
06:13lights being towards the top of that list, especially when it's dark, obviously you can't
06:18see it in the summertime though. And I know you took a small herd of people to the Southwest
06:22this past summer with your new West Side Venture, Ross Ellis Picturesque Adventures. We'll talk
06:27about that in a little bit. But what are some good places for excellent, severe weather,
06:33lightning or aurora photography? Is there anything that's not so intuitive? I know obviously
06:37a dark sky away from city lights for the nighttime stuff. Anything beyond that though that you
06:43would offer as maybe something to keep in mind when trying to pick out a location to
06:46shoot some weather or aurora type of photography? So I guess, you know, we'll start off with
06:52maybe this other overly basic, right? So you got to have the lightning or severe weather
06:59or aurora, whatever it is that you're looking to take photos of, you have to have that present.
07:02So, you know, I can say, hey, go to Oklahoma for tornadoes or for severe weather or dramatic
07:09storm shots, but if the storms aren't there, it's not going to work. So it's all a matter
07:12of kind of figuring out where that's at. So for me, when it comes to lightning and some
07:17of these monsoonal storms, some of the photos that we're seeing here, I'm driven to go out
07:21to Southern Arizona in particular. And, you know, I may have to chase that and move around
07:25a little bit, but the storms are more consistently there. In late July going into early August,
07:31it's like just about every day, not, you know, maybe 75, 80% of the time, there's a
07:35storm somewhere that's going on and it's a little more consistent. Out in the plains,
07:42you get a lot more severe weather, but it kind of comes in bursts, right? You might
07:46get to, you know, six, seven days in a row where there's active weather and you might
07:49go two weeks and there's not a whole lot there. So that those locations, yeah, definitely
07:56it just depends on kind of where things are at. Northern Lights, you know, being Alaska,
08:00by the way, pointing out with the Aurora, you know, so many times we have people that'll
08:04say, or you'll read online, there's a lot of kind of misinformation or just not fully
08:08complete info saying like, oh, Yellowknife, Canada is the spot to go or Fairbanks, Alaska
08:14or Iceland. The truth is, is that neither, none of those really have an advantage over
08:19one another. You just need a clear sky and some auroral activity, but the aurora activity
08:25in Fairbanks or Northern Canada or Northern Norway or Sweden, it's all going to be about
08:31the same on any given night. It really comes down to the cloud cover. So I wouldn't say
08:35there's a magic spot when it comes to that. It's just, you know, finding kind of the,
08:39maybe the easier spot to get to. Good advice there, Ross. Well, hey, we have our first
08:45viewer question and this comes from Dave in Washington. Dave writes, any advice for someone
08:49just getting into photography? So one, number one, have fun with it, right? That's the whole
08:55reason you want to get into it. You know, it can be intimidating when you look at some
09:00of these spectacular images that might be online. I mean, it's all over the place, whether
09:04it be Instagram or Flickr or just kind of doing a Google search, but again, have fun
09:09with it. And what I like about photography is that it seems to be a hobby that I can't
09:13master, but at the same time, I can kind of go at my own pace and continue to improve.
09:20So some of the photography results that I'm getting today, I'm very excited with it, but
09:27as I learn more and kind of go, okay, I could do this a little bit differently or that a
09:31little bit differently and camera equipment gets a little bit better and nicer and so
09:35forth, you know, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, I would hope that
09:39I could still be doing maybe some other cool things or stuff that's a little bit better,
09:42a little more creative. And as you go back in time, you know, kind of working the way
09:47through all of those different types of photography. I mean, it definitely takes some learning,
09:53but you don't need to absorb all of it at the same time. Find something that you like
09:56to do, find something that's fun to do, and then just kind of work through that and yeah,
10:02and then learn from what you're doing. And that's kind of the best advice I can give,
10:07I guess.
10:08All right, that's good. And you know, the beautiful thing about, people love to travel
10:12and sometimes traveling puts you in the right spot. But I once heard somebody say that the
10:16beauty of the weather is that you can stay put and the landscape, the skyscape changes
10:20over your heads as well. So you don't always have to book that interstate or international
10:25trip to have something great come to you at some point as well. Well, Ross, this has been
10:29great stuff so far. We have much more to explore. And coming up a little later in WeatherWise,
10:34we've shown you pictures from here on Earth, but what about space? We'll take you on an
10:38out-of-this-world trip for some celestial snapshots through the years in our weather
10:42by the numbers segment. But up next, we're going to chat more with Ross Ellett about
10:46the connection between weather and photography. We'll take a closer look at the auroras and how
10:50his pictures of this weather phenomenon caught international attention. Plus,
10:54we'll answer more of your viewer questions when Ask the Experts returns.
10:57Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Jeff Cornish, and today we are
11:01exploring the connection between meteorology and weather photography with my good friend
11:05Ross Ellett, former co-worker, and he's a meteorologist and photographer. Ross works
11:11at 13ABC in Toledo, Ohio. We overlapped there 2012 and 2013. And Ross does a tremendous job
11:17on the air, but also with the weather. So let's take a look at some of his pictures.
11:27So Ross, in the previous segment, we were discussing auroras and some of your photos
11:32of the aurora catching the eye of a documentary team from Japan when you were early in your
11:37photography journey. So this is my favorite story that you shared. And tell us about that experience,
11:43how this all came about. I still am scratching my head. I mean, this has been, I want to say it was
11:48like 2009. So it's been a number of years and it's still bizarre to think about. So at that point,
11:56at that point, I mean, now it's easier to get aurora data. It's still not this most simple
12:00thing in the world, but there's a lot of different apps out there. And if you know
12:03what the data is trying to tell you, that information is there. But back in that 2008,
12:092009 era, I would, you know, there might be a chance to see something or go to Alaska. I wanted
12:14to have that data at my fingertips. And again, you didn't really have great phones or, you know,
12:19anything else. I just needed a basic source where I could go and get that info. There really wasn't
12:23anything out there on the web. So I just built my own website and then had all the information
12:29there that I wanted to be able to know if I could see the Northern Lights on one spot. And then I
12:34noticed it started getting quite a bit of web traffic. So then I just kind of added on to it.
12:38And I still have it today. It's called Aurora Tracker. And it just kind of explains, you know,
12:43about the Northern Lights and what the data means and so forth. So out of the blue, I ended up
12:48getting a phone call at the TV station I was working at from some Japanese film crew. And
12:53it was an urgent message to give them a call back. I thought it was spam. I don't know. I
12:57didn't, I don't think I called our chief at the time, kept getting these messages. So I reached
13:01back to him and they said, we're very interested. We want to come to, I was working in Arkansas of
13:06all places at the time. So we want to come to Arkansas and do a film, a documentary deal about
13:14seeing the Northern Lights and you photographing them and so forth. Again, keep in mind I'm in
13:17Arkansas at the time, which in the biggest solar minimum that we had had in a hundred years. So
13:23it's not like the Northern Lights were very common at that point in that latitude, but I said, okay,
13:27if you want to come, that's fine. And they did. And they were there for two days. It was my two
13:32days off during that week. And it was one of the strangest ordeals, very nice people, but you know,
13:37they, they wanted to get an idea of what Arkansas was like. We went out hiking, kind of showing
13:42them around. I had to kind of go through like a mock film deal. Like I was going to go out and
13:47see the Northern Lights one night. It would make more sense now, because you've been doing this for
13:50a long time. When I need to find Aurora information, I actually do Google Ross Ellett Aurora tracker.
13:56It takes you there. So I'm a user as well. But how do you handle extreme weather conditions?
14:02Sometimes it's really cold out there. You've got precipitation to deal with, blizzards,
14:05severe thunderstorms. How do you make sure that you're safe when out in the field and protecting
14:09your equipment as well? Okay. So you brought up, yeah, there's a lot of things there. So
14:13safety is number one. And so it's, I mean, yeah, safety is always number one, but especially,
14:19you know, if you're driving, you're driving in unfamiliar locations, you're taking other people
14:23with you. So that's something I'm always keeping the back of my mind, or maybe I should say the
14:27front of my mind, I guess is number one. Number two is that, yeah, the different weather conditions
14:32can definitely be, you know, tough and cold weather in particular, right? So if we're talking
14:36Northern Alaska in January, February, it can get brutally cold. And I've been out there where it's
14:4330, 40, 45 below zero. And you know, you got to layer up, bundle up and do the best you can.
14:51The other thing is, is that when you get to that cold, batteries don't really stay warm very long
14:55at all. So one tip I've got is I always have a battery obviously in the camera, but I'll have
15:00like two, maybe three others in my front pocket with a bunch of those hot hands, right? That are
15:05just in there. One battery dies, I'll pop the next warm one in there, throw the cold one back in the,
15:10you know, the warm pocket and to let it warm back up. So it's always a consideration and trying to
15:17figure out how to navigate that. That's good advice there. And on your website, RossEllett.com,
15:22you got some great wildlife photography on there as well. So how is that different from weather?
15:29Totally different. It's something where my, you know, my level of expertise isn't quite the same,
15:35right? And you had asked earlier, there was a viewer question talking about like, you know,
15:39where would you start in photography? And again, I would start like where those interest spots are,
15:45and then it kind of evolves from there. And so for me, it was weather photography. And
15:49then the wildlife photography has started to kind of come along just because I find it really
15:53fascinating. And, but it's totally different, Jeff, totally different. I mean, the lighting
15:58and the weather still has an impact there, of course, but yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put my
16:04level at expert level. I got a lot to learn when it comes to that. But some of the images we had
16:08there of the bears, that was also in Alaska at Katmai National Park. And that was one of the
16:13coolest spots that I've ever been to, that national park, where it's right at that waterfall,
16:18Brooks Falls, and all these big coastal brown bears are going there and just eating, you know,
16:24the fish or trying to go fishing, essentially, as they're jumping up the waterfall during the
16:27salmon run in the summertime. I mean, just an amazing experience, something I'll never forget.
16:33That looks awesome. Absolutely awesome, Ross. Well, we have another viewer question right now.
16:37This one comes from Susan in Maine and Susan writes, are there any places in the world that
16:41you would like to visit and photograph? Oh, a lot of places. I don't, I've got, I have a whole
16:48bucket list of locations written down. So I'm not going to go through all of that stuff. So I've
16:52been to all 50 states, been very blessed with that. I've been to Canada and spent quite a bit
16:55of time there and to many of the provinces, but outside of that, haven't really done much traveling
17:00else around the rest of the world. And so areas like Iceland, Northern Norway and Sweden,
17:06New Zealand and Australia, I mean, these are just some of the countries that come to mind
17:10that I would love to photograph. But Iceland is one of those top spots on that list. And,
17:16you know, it's cloudy there a lot. And so that actually makes it less likely you're going to
17:20see the Northern lights just because the clouds are going to block the view more. But I mean,
17:23there's so many other things going on there. Ross Ellett, my good friend, meteorologist,
17:27photographer from 13 ABC in Toledo. You got to rossellett.com. Ross Ellett's picturesque
17:32adventures where you're taking groups of people to a different part of the country or the world
17:36and showing them how to leverage the weather for their photography skills. Thanks again for sharing
17:42all this with us, Ross. Great talking to you again. And coming up next in WeatherWise, we're
17:45going to show you some of the advancements in space photography throughout the years
17:49in our Weather by the Numbers segment. Ask the Experts returns after the break.
18:05Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. It is now time for WeatherWise and continuing to look
18:10at weather photography. We're looking up for images from space in our segment called Weather
18:15by the Numbers. First, it was back in 1959 when NASA sent the first images of Earth. The Explorer
18:226 satellite captured and scanned the visual data showing our planet and converted it to electrical
18:28signals transmitted back to Earth. The low resolution black and white images were sent
18:32using facsimile transmission or fax. Decades of NASA progress continued into the 90s when the
18:39space agency launched the Hubble Space Telescope. Since 1993, it has been sending clear images that
18:45help us understand the universe. So the telescope is the size of the school bus and was initially
18:50expected to last just 15 years. It has now been sending space images for more than three decades.
18:56But it's the images from the James Webb Space Telescope that are changing the way
19:01we see the universe and our place in it. Ever since 2023, the 10 billion dollar observatory
19:07has been sending amazing images from light years away with color and clarity beyond anything
19:11previously seen. NASA says the Webb Telescope will help us learn about the birth of stars,
19:17the assembly of galaxies, and even possibly the origins of life. The telescope is designed to last
19:24at least 10 years, potentially 20 years, and we can look forward to more space photography in the
19:29years ahead from farther away than we could have ever imagined back in the 1950s. Thanks so much
19:34for joining us here on AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm Jeff Cornish. Remember, whenever you
19:39have a question about weather, space, or science, you can email us at asktheexperts at accuweather.com
19:45or call us at 888-566-6606. Thanks for being with us. Have a great one.