At a family backyard barbecue last summer, Craig Boehm’s attention was sharply divided between flipping burgers on a smoking grill and watching the radar on his screen. Weather experts said an approaching storm might slide by just south of Regina, Sask., where Boehm, 47, works full-time in the hospitality sector and chases storms on the side.
With possible tornado warnings on the horizon, Boehm was itching to hit the road. After dinner he hastened his guests off the property, and 20 minutes later was off in his Hyundai SUV with his wife, camera gear stowed.
Checking Google Maps, he spied an old abandoned farm in Avonlea. Was this where it all would come together? He knows that farms make epic foregrounds in storm photography. Boehm has a thing for farms.
It’s been 40 years since he spent boyhood summers at his family’s farm in Yorkton in south-eastern Saskatchewan, where their barn was the hub of all activity. He now yearns to capture that nostalgia by photographing old barns and buildings from a simpler time, calling it “a huge bonus” if he can fit an angry storm behind it.
As they approached Avonlea, Boehm said to his wife, “The storm is starting to ramp up and looks like it might go tornado-warned.” Everything was lining up for a perfect shot.
“Once it got to my location, the storm structure on this storm was otherworldly,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that it resulted in his best shot of 2024.
“What you are seeing is a cinnamon bun updraft portion of the storm,” he said. “This area is rain-free, which is allowing you to see this amazing storm structure. And of course, the old building is the star of the shot.”
Although the storm didn’t produce any confirmed tornadoes, Boehm said it later hit southeast Saskatchewan where “baseball-sized hail” caused severe damage.
Buildings of old Saskatchewan became hallmarks of Boehm’s work from his endless scouring of back country roads. Since he first started chasing storms in 2012, driving 8,000 to 13,000 kilometres a summer, he marked on Google Maps every old barn or building he came across. He can now quickly plot potential foreground models along his routes to ominous dark clouds.
Those old buildings embody the essence of Saskatchewan, Boehm says. Every year, more of them are lost. He has captured over two dozen abandoned structures that are no longer standing, giving him the satisfaction of keeping their history alive while photographing “something nobody will ever again capture.”
The quintessential prairie grain elevator that still stands in rural Bulyea, southeast of Saskatoon, has “Saskatchewan written all over it,” Boehm says. He chased a storm for eight hours in July 2022 to shoot the antiquated tower. In the image, it looms tall before an “absolutely insane storm structure.”
The photographer was first hooked on old barns when he captured his favourite in front of a storm in southeast Saskatchewan in 2013. He had just bought a better camera after his initial endeavours proved underwhelming, he said. Everything lined up—the storm, the barn, Boehm himself, and even a horse—for his debut work.
Things don’t always line up that way.
“Storm chasing can be very rewarding and also very frustrating,” Boehm said. The photoshoot takes planning.
“One to three days out I will be looking at weather models,” he said. He then chooses which days to take off work.
“The morning of the chase, I will look at the most updated weather models, and at this point, I have to commit to my target,” he said. There are sometimes several targets to choose from.
Delving into the storm, inherent dangers present themselves. He takes plenty of precautions and notes what the biggest danger is.
“The number one danger, I would say, is not the storm itself,” he said. “It is the driving to and from and during the chase: other drivers, road conditions, animals all pose a great risk.”
“Last thing you want to do is run out of gas,” he adds. “Once I get to my target location, I will fill up with gas, as when chasing in rural Saskatchewan, you never know when the next chance to fill up with gas will be.”
If lightning strikes too close, Boehm photographs from inside his SUV.
One summer in 2018, Boehm was alongside a small contingent of storm chasers near Wood Mountain when four tornadoes were sighted blasting eastward. A new storm overtook them from the south.
“A small tornado crossed the road about 75 yards in front of us, causing EF1 [Enhanced Fujita Scale] damage,” he said. “As we continued east, power poles on the side of the road were snapping off from the winds.”
Just as the convoy cleared patches of “ping-pong-sized hail and rain,” they ran into a multi-vortex tornado that changed into a rare wedge tornado.
“Things could have gone very bad if we were just a few minutes later, as this tornado crossed right across the path we drove in from,” Boehm said.
As a storm photographer, Boehm tries to minimize risks and learn from his mistakes. He always plans an escape route and refuses to chase at night.
Hazards and all, he explains what keeps him addictively driving into the fray: “To capture the moment and get a shot no one else gets.”
He says storm chasing has also garnered him lifelong friendships, and that’s “one of the most underrated parts of storm chasing.”
Once the chase begins, though, Boehm and his cohorts part ways.
“I typically try to get myself on a different road than other chasers, or locations that gives me a chance to get a photo that nobody else gets,” he said. “Who likes to see 10 photos of the exact same thing?”
