The "Post-00" photographer chasing the super storm: continue the meteorological dream with the lens and "whistle" for extreme weather with popular science
2022-04-06
On the vast green field, a huge storm is brewing, the cloud wall rotates, the wind and rain are like darkness, and the noise seems to jump out of the screen. This work, taken in zhalut banner, Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia, is praised by the meteorological industry as the "milestone" storm photography of domestic mesoscale meteorology. The photographer behind is Liu Yijing, a "Post-00" boy from Jiangxi. The work was later included as the cover of the special issue of the SCI journal progress of atmospheric science, and Liu Yijing was also invited to give an academic report on meteorology at Peking University. ▲ Liu Yijing's photographic works were included as the cover of the special issue of progress in atmospheric science of SCI journal Storm photographer, most people have never heard of such a profession. In the summer of 2020, Liu Yijing officially embarked on the road of professional storm photographer and became a up Master of station B ("range Sifang"). Thunderstorm delay images and meteorological science popularization with shocking visual effects are the main contents he shared. On March 26, Liu Yijing was reported by the CCTV news program Newsweek. In the program, the host Bai Yansong praised him, saying that he was "a teacher in special need in the Internet age and brought new knowledge points to netizens with his major". For Liu Yijing, storm photography is not only the continuation of his dream, but also the light of fire that guides him to fight against the "storm" of life. Travel thousands of miles a day to capture the super storm The "milestone" storm was taken in August 2021. From a professional point of view, this work records the mesocyclone cloud wall structure like the giant vortex of super monomer, the "precipitation trace" in the sinking area in front of the storm and the "wall cloud" structure that breeds tornadoes. Liu Yijing popularized science in the comment area: the formation of this thunderstorm weather generally meets three conditions: deep "vertical wind shear", high atmospheric instability energy and strong dynamic uplift. This work is only one of the hundreds of storms he shot in the past year. ▲ photographic works of Liu Yijing On the network platform, Liu Yijing condensed his 2021 into such numbers: crossing 11 provinces in China, chasing 24000 kilometers of storms, shooting 48107 pictures and nearly 100 delayed images of storms. On June 25, 2021, he drove all the way from Ulanqab to Bashang, Hebei Province, with a total mileage of nearly 1000 kilometers, in order to pursue the super monomer - "the type with the strongest intensity, the largest volume and the most types of disasters in thunderstorms". The next month, a topic of "photographers travel thousands of miles to shoot super storms after 00" was posted on the microblog hot search. In Liu Yijing's photography works, the storm and the associated meteorological landscape are the absolute protagonists - in the picture, the huge cloud structures are clearly discernible, they rotate and fluctuate, or violent or calm, and the light and color change with the surge of undercurrent. Storm photography is a seasonal work. "No place in the world can chase storms all year round". Domestically, spring and summer are the seasons with frequent severe convective weather. During these periods, Liu Yijing is on the road most of the time. ▲ Liu Yijing of "chasing the wind" Generally speaking, in July and August every year, he will continue to pay attention to the changes of meteorological conditions in various parts of the country. From March to June, he will "chase the wind" dispersedly. A few days before each departure, Liu Yijing will delimit a possible storm area of three to 500 square kilometers by analyzing professional meteorological data, such as radar echo map and satellite cloud map. Then, he will choose a transit city. After arriving in these cities, contact the local driver to rush to the predetermined location and keep getting close to the storm until the naked eye can see the structure of the storm and judge the key pictures he wants to shoot, so as to set the plane position and plan the shooting time and direction. In Liu Yijing's "chasing the wind" list, these cities are no more than Hohhot, Ulanqab, Xilinhot, horingol, Hulunbuir, Qiqihar and other places. "The more beautiful the weather, the more dangerous" People always need to look up to see the storm. Even so, it is difficult to see the whole picture without crossing enough time and space scales. The lens can bring a broader field of vision to people. "In that natural world full of tension, individuals seem to shrink sharply, which is the charm of mesoscale meteorology." Mesoscale meteorology mentioned by Liu Yijing is a weather system with strong wind or heavy precipitation events within hundreds of kilometers of horizontal scale and time dimension from a few minutes to a day or two. People are more familiar with the thunderstorms, hail, squall lines, tornadoes, downburst and other phenomena it brings. Most storms occur in the evening or evening. He usually arrives at his destination one night in advance and prepares emergency supplies such as dry food, water and trailer rope the next morning. In the car, he needs to observe the satellite cloud map and radar data on the computer at any time to adjust the driving route. Sometimes the analysis is not accurate enough. The storm may have a deviation of two or three hundred kilometers, or he may have "nowhere to escape". Once, Liu Yijing risked riding a shared bike to shoot on the bridge of the viewing platform. In order to avoid lightning, he had to throw away all metal objects and squat in the middle of the asphalt road. Finally, the camera, UAV and himself were soaked. ▲ photographic works of Liu Yijing Another time, it was on the grassland of Inner Mongolia. In order to take a complete picture of the arc cloud and the wind before the super monomer thunderstorm formed, Liu Yijing stayed until the last minute. He didn't expect the wind speed to be so fast. When he saw the dust rising tens of meters high on the grassland skyline, he had no time to collect the equipment. He had to desperately grasp the luggage rack on the off-road roof to prevent himself from being blown away. ▲ photographic works of Liu Yijing "The wind can't open your eyes." This is the first time he has experienced such a strong storm, but he is not very afraid of the gust, because the strong wind is only the "gust front" in front of the storm. There is a certain distance between the real rainstorm, hail, lightning and the "gust front". The most dangerous one was on August 9, 2020, when he encountered the most dangerous "Hail crisis" in Ulanqab. The shooting was near the wind farm. He heard a strange sound approaching slowly. When hesitating, the voice became louder and louder. When he recovered, he immediately got into the car with the driver. After closing the door, two seconds later, hail the size of a table tennis ball fell. "That's the sound of hail falling! The hail was too big, and I was afraid at that time." "The more beautiful the weather is, the more dangerous it is." This is also the reason why he always takes risks to aim his camera at the sky above his head and meet the thunderstorm monomer head-on. ▲ photographic works of Liu Yijing Continuation of dreams If we want to trace the reasons for such enthusiasm for meteorology, Liu Yijing mentioned a picture book. When he was two and a half years old, his mother who worked in green agriculture bought him a lot of popular science picture books. He couldn't put down the wind song, which he talked about the weather alone. Every day, he asked his mother to read it several times. "When he went to kindergarten, every page of the book had been turned incomplete". After middle school, this obsession gradually turned into the exploration of meteorological knowledge. He joined the QQ group of many meteorology lovers, read many professional books, read hundreds of Meteorology papers, and even met many professionals from the local meteorological bureau. Sometimes he was invited to participate in their seminars. At that time, Liu Yijing's biggest dream was to become a weather forecaster. Contrary to his wishes, at the end of 2017, before the college entrance examination sprint, he suffered from severe chronic enteritis, physical discomfort, unable to attend classes normally, and was also very negative emotionally. "It's like a 'storm' in life. It's very painful. I feel farther and farther away from my dream." Until March 15, 2018, when he was studying an old SLR camera in 2012 at home, a multi cell thunderstorm suddenly appeared about three kilometers outside the window, "a shining lightning appears every few seconds". With a wide field of vision and no rain blocking, he couldn't understand photography. He pressed it indiscriminately and actually took multiple images of lightning hanging in the air. He sent these photos to the Internet and won the first million reading. Many platforms also reprinted them one after another. What really made him decide to be a storm photographer was in the summer of 2020. At that time, because of the summer vacation, he had a lot of time to stay at home. At the bottleneck of photography, he worries about the subject matter of photography all day. The turnaround took place on May 5, 2020. On that day, an extreme severe convective weather "attacked" Jiangxi. He waited all night and tried to photograph storm clouds with drones. After the UAV took off, the storm cloud suddenly expanded rapidly, showing an "explosive" growth and evolved into a "multi monomer Thunderstorm" mode. The bottom of the cloud cluster also began to twist violently, and the rough surface cloud (the world's top ten strange clouds) came into being. ▲ generation of rough clouds (the world's top ten strange clouds), photo by Liu Yijing The birth of this work made him ecstatic. It also made him realize that it is not impossible to chase the storm in China and shoot works related to celestial phenomena. He began to focus on "mesoscale meteorology" again and seize every spare time to go out and Crouch for the arrival of the storm. At the beginning of the summer vacation, through meteorological radar data, he predicted the attack of a strong storm in advance and photographed the scene of "downburst" sweeping. With this successful case of shooting through independent prediction, subsequent shooting can not be received. In the middle of July 2020, by analyzing the meteorological data, he learned that there would be severe convective weather in Inner Mongolia for several consecutive days, so a "follow the wind journey" began. This was his first time to follow the wind in a real sense. "I didn't have enough experience and didn't take a very satisfactory picture." After returning home, he began to focus on reading the meteorological papers of domestic provinces, trying to summarize some time and areas suitable for the development of strong storms, and study them in combination with the terrain. On August 1, 2020, he flew to Inner Mongolia again after seeing a concentrated storm outbreak period. That time, he took the most satisfactory work of that year—— In Ulanqab, when the storm passed overhead, a ray of sunshine shone in from behind it in an instant. While eating in the restaurant, he hurried out to see a huge rainbow across the grassland. When the rainbow gradually disappeared, he thought he could put away his equipment and go back to eat. To his surprise, a large number of milky clouds suddenly appeared behind his head. At this time, the sun was just setting, and he wanted to continue to wait here to see if there would be fire clouds. ▲ rainbow traverses the grassland, photographed by Liu Yijing As expected, the sunset suddenly hit the Milky cloud at the tail of the storm, and the orange sunset instantly dyed the whole world. "This is the most magnificent celestial phenomenon I have ever seen in my life - burning milky cloud." ▲ burning milky cloud photographed by Liu Yijing The Milky cloud gradually disappeared, and the fatigue after excitement instantly poured into his body, but there was another storm breaking out in the sky and frequent lightning. He decided to stick to it, so he photographed the extreme combination of celestial phenomena again - milky cloud and lightning, as well as the rain streamer hanging at the bottom. ▲ milky clouds and lightning, and rain streamers hanging at the bottom, photographed by Liu Yijing Pursuit of humanistic care and self realization behind Meteorology In addition to professional storm photographer, another identity of Liu Yijing is meteorological science popularization. In his eyes, as a professional storm photographer, "we should not only shoot the storm, but also form the storm
Edit：Li Ling Responsible editor：Chen Jie
Source：RED STAR NEWS
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