October 27, 2023 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Mike Olbinski is an Arizona-based photographer. He photographs families and weddings, and also... chases storms. Here’s Mike with how he got into this unique career.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of Mike Olbinski, an Arizona based photographer that takes
family photos, shoots weddings, and also faces storm Here's Mike
with how he got into this unique line of work.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
All I know is I've loved whether my entire life.
I know that there's a moment where a lightning bolt
hit behind her house and I was outside in the
patty with my dad watching the storm, and a lightning
bolt hit probably like one hundred feet away, couple hundred
feet away, and I was like seven or eight, and
I just remember it still vividly. It was so bright
(01:01):
and intense. I don't even know if I remember the
sound of thunder. All I remember is I couldn't see
anything for like about like five ten seconds. It was
so bright.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And that always stuck with me, and that came back
to me.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
That memory came back to me when I heard some
other storm chasers talking about why they loved chasing tornadoes.
And when they were little kids, their trailer part with
their parents' own got hit by a tornado and their mom,
they said, anyway, got sucked out a window and then
came back in and then jumped on top of her
two boys and was holding them down on the couch
(01:38):
or the floor to make sure, you know, they didn't
nothing happened to them. And then those boys grew up
into teenagers and all they want to do was chase tornadoes.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
They were fascinated with them. So I was like, so
that's like a little origin story.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Kind of a thing that they had, and I'm like,
maybe this was mine because when I was getting into photography,
it was lightning is what I wanted to shoot. That
was what I was looking at online seeing people take
these pictures of lightning, and I'm like, how do you
do that?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I want to do that. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And so that's really what kind of drew me to
I think photography in the first place. But even after,
you know, kind of figuring that out once I was
into it, I was looking back at old photos of
mine from high school and later, and I have a
photo from high school of a really you know, kind
of crazy severe storm and I couldn't I guess at
(02:34):
the time, I couldn't help it. I ran outside with
a camera and took a picture of the storm. But
that was, you know, when I was like sixteen or something,
and so I think that's always been there. I just
didn't ever realize that was anything I could do. So
I was just staring at lightning photos. Couldn't believe people
could take those pictures, and I want to learn how
to do that. Around the same time, my daughter was born.
(02:56):
She's almost thirteen now, and all I, of course want
to do is take pictures of her. And you know,
I had a little dinky point and shoot camera that
could do really close up macro mode, and so when
she was a little baby, I'm just sitting there taking
really close ups of her face and her hands, and
I'm like, man, I really like this.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
This is fun.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And then I tried to use that and get picture
of lightning and I captured somehow with this dumb camera
this amazing lightning strike right by my house, and I
was like, holy crap, I want to do this. This
is amazing, but I can't do it with this camera.
I need a better camera. And I went home that
night and told my wife Gina, I need a real
(03:39):
camera can do long exposures. This, you know, point and
click thing is no good for me. And she was like,
all right, well, let's do it. And we sold all
our DVD like box sets of DVDs we had at
the time that we really weren't watching, but they actually
sold for good money back then on eBay. It was surprising,
and made like five or six hundred bucks, bought my
first real camera, and then from there it was you know,
(04:03):
taking pictures of my daughter with a better camera, better lenses,
doing you know, you know, cooler stuff with it, and
then getting a little bit better where friends are like, hey,
can you just take a you know, Christmas card picture
for us, which is like the old story that always
happens for people to get a camera. And then I started,
you know, I'm taking pictures of storms, and so it
kind of all kind of happened at the same time,
(04:25):
and I, you know, I shoot weddings and family stuff
now on top of doing the storms, and so I
still am doing the same thing.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I never decided really anything.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It was just more of I want to chase these
storms and capture these images. And back in the day,
I was watching storm Chasers on Discovery Channel and that
was a big kind of inspiration because I didn't even
know people really did that until I was watching that, and.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I was just blown away.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I'm like, wow, there's people out there that like this
as much as me, and then they drive thousands of
miles to chase it. At that time, I would had
been just waiting for storms around my house, like, wow,
I have a better camera and now I can actually
drive out and try to get closer to storms that
are that aren't right here and increase my odds of
(05:11):
getting good pictures and good lightning photos. And that's really
kind of how it started. It just slowly grew, you know,
I just would start going chasing and then it also
my daughter was also kind of part of it, because
you know, I was starting to go out a lot,
and so, you know, to to kind of justify me
being gone all the time, I would take Lyla with me.
(05:35):
She's a year and a half. She'd watch movies in
the back and to give my wife a break at night,
and it was kind of my way to be able
to get out a little more. So we kind of
started doing that together, and then every you know, every summer,
it was just kind of driving more and more around Arizona.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And then at some point I decided.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I'm going to go try to chase you know, a
supercellar tornado out in the planes and went out for
one day in like two thousand and nine or twenty ten,
and it was a horrible bust. And then you know,
a couple of days next year, a couple of days
the year after, and then that just all slowly grew.
But probably I would say if there was ever like
a conscious decision was in twenty eleven and July fifth,
(06:12):
actually twenty eleven, I had time lapsed and it was
like my third ever time lapse. I was just practicing,
kind of, but there's this monumental, apocalyptic wall of dust
coming into Phoenix. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
And then I posted that online like it within an
hour or two, and then it went viral.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It was all across the world, on all the news
stations everything.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
At that moment, I remember thinking, man, I really love
doing this, and people and then people ended up licensing
that video for commercials and all this stuff, and I'm like, man,
I love doing this and I would do it for free,
but here's people paying me for it. And so there
(06:57):
was a decision there that I'm like, Okay, I'm going
to keep doing this time lapse thing and seeing what
kind of footage I can get. And then seeing what
comes of it, and so I just kept doing that
and then slowly, you know, people would see some of
the things and license it.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
In twenty thirteen, I had another.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Good one go viral, and that's been licensed and still
licensed to this day, and so it was kind of
like confirmation that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I had made the right decision.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But then I also started putting all these time laps
clips I shot. I started putting them to music and
making little short films out of them. You know, they
started off kind of crappy in my opinion, but I
did my best. But as time went on, they got
better and better, and they would get they were more
popular that people hadn't really seen that as much that
they would get staff picks on Vimeo, they would get
(07:43):
shared on a bunch of blogs all over I get
them in film festivals and things like that. So I
think a lot of that stuff has just been kind
of a progression of just continued kind of my passion
for it is what really drives me.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It's almost like an addiction. So I never kind of quit.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I just keep going and going and going, and when
I'm out chasing, I never it's hard for me to
ever stop, you know. I mean, if I'm by myself
and there's lightning or something, I will just keep chasing,
you know. And other if there's people with me, I'm like,
you probably got to go to a hotel. Everyone's tired
and stuff. But but for me, I just go to
the ends of the earth kind of thing. And so
I think, you know, however, my story's been, it's been
(08:22):
one of just being passionate and dedicated to what I
do and kind of just continually proving that all the time.
You know, I just every year it's keep chasing, keep
getting footage, keep putting these films out, and kind of
being consistent with it. And so yeah, at some point,
you know, I had I have a book published on Amazon,
and then I got I want to emmy with the
(08:43):
local news station here that used my footage about five
six years ago.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
So I got that emmy.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So the verified you know thing on Twitter and Instagram
and all that stuff, you know, was kind of a
result of that. It's been about ten eleven years now
where just trying to be you know, really consistent, and
it's been and and as I've grown, you know, myself
in my photography and the timelape stuff, people around the
world will have kind of known me for this kind
(09:09):
of thing, like the BBC National Geographic. They come to
me for things where this year people are, you know,
they're trying to get footage for a show, and so
I'm like a forecaster for them where I'm guiding. We
just died a TV production and I was kind of
a guide, a forecaster, and a couple of years ago,
Pearl Jam license a bunch of clips from the stock
footage place I use and have all like a ton
of my footage in it. And then they did a
(09:30):
preview a little sneak trailer for it where they were
all on stage playing in the background was just my
lightning time laps flashing behind Pearl Jam. And I'm sitting
there just going like this isn't that surprising, but it's
also insanely surprising, and I just can't believe it. And
I'm really really, you know, kind of humbled and blown
away that this ever happened. I mean, all I really
(09:51):
did was want to just chase storms and take pictures
and I just love it that much and somehow this
has happened.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
And a great job on the production by our team
who really combined their efforts Madison, Faith and Robbie and
a special thanks to Mike Olbinski. And again you heard
it from him. He does take pictures of weddings and
family photos and he loves doing it. But the real
thing he loves, the passion, is the chase, and the
(10:21):
chase of storms. Lightning drew him to photography, storms pulled
him in all the way. The story of Mike Obinski.
Like so many Americans, their passion becomes their business. Their
business is their passion. His story here on our American
Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of Mike Olbinski, an Arizona based photographer that takes
family photos, shoots weddings, and also faces storm Here's Mike
with how he got into this unique line of work.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
All I know is I've loved whether my entire life.
I know that there's a moment where a lightning bolt
hit behind her house and I was outside in the
patty with my dad watching the storm, and a lightning
bolt hit probably like one hundred feet away, couple hundred
feet away, and I was like seven or eight, and
I just remember it still vividly. It was so bright
(01:01):
and intense. I don't even know if I remember the
sound of thunder. All I remember is I couldn't see
anything for like about like five ten seconds. It was
so bright.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And that always stuck with me, and that came back
to me.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
That memory came back to me when I heard some
other storm chasers talking about why they loved chasing tornadoes.
And when they were little kids, their trailer part with
their parents' own got hit by a tornado and their mom,
they said, anyway, got sucked out a window and then
came back in and then jumped on top of her
two boys and was holding them down on the couch
(01:38):
or the floor to make sure, you know, they didn't
nothing happened to them. And then those boys grew up
into teenagers and all they want to do was chase tornadoes.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
They were fascinated with them. So I was like, so
that's like a little origin story.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Kind of a thing that they had, and I'm like,
maybe this was mine because when I was getting into photography,
it was lightning is what I wanted to shoot. That
was what I was looking at online seeing people take
these pictures of lightning, and I'm like, how do you
do that?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I want to do that. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And so that's really what kind of drew me to
I think photography in the first place. But even after,
you know, kind of figuring that out once I was
into it, I was looking back at old photos of
mine from high school and later, and I have a
photo from high school of a really you know, kind
of crazy severe storm and I couldn't I guess at
(02:34):
the time, I couldn't help it. I ran outside with
a camera and took a picture of the storm. But
that was, you know, when I was like sixteen or something,
and so I think that's always been there. I just
didn't ever realize that was anything I could do. So
I was just staring at lightning photos. Couldn't believe people
could take those pictures, and I want to learn how
to do that. Around the same time, my daughter was born.
(02:56):
She's almost thirteen now, and all I, of course want
to do is take pictures of her. And you know,
I had a little dinky point and shoot camera that
could do really close up macro mode, and so when
she was a little baby, I'm just sitting there taking
really close ups of her face and her hands, and
I'm like, man, I really like this.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
This is fun.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And then I tried to use that and get picture
of lightning and I captured somehow with this dumb camera
this amazing lightning strike right by my house, and I
was like, holy crap, I want to do this. This
is amazing, but I can't do it with this camera.
I need a better camera. And I went home that
night and told my wife Gina, I need a real
(03:39):
camera can do long exposures. This, you know, point and
click thing is no good for me. And she was like,
all right, well, let's do it. And we sold all
our DVD like box sets of DVDs we had at
the time that we really weren't watching, but they actually
sold for good money back then on eBay. It was surprising,
and made like five or six hundred bucks, bought my
first real camera, and then from there it was you know,
(04:03):
taking pictures of my daughter with a better camera, better lenses,
doing you know, you know, cooler stuff with it, and
then getting a little bit better where friends are like, hey,
can you just take a you know, Christmas card picture
for us, which is like the old story that always
happens for people to get a camera. And then I started,
you know, I'm taking pictures of storms, and so it
kind of all kind of happened at the same time,
(04:25):
and I, you know, I shoot weddings and family stuff
now on top of doing the storms, and so I
still am doing the same thing.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I never decided really anything.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It was just more of I want to chase these
storms and capture these images. And back in the day,
I was watching storm Chasers on Discovery Channel and that
was a big kind of inspiration because I didn't even
know people really did that until I was watching that, and.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I was just blown away.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I'm like, wow, there's people out there that like this
as much as me, and then they drive thousands of
miles to chase it. At that time, I would had
been just waiting for storms around my house, like, wow,
I have a better camera and now I can actually
drive out and try to get closer to storms that
are that aren't right here and increase my odds of
(05:11):
getting good pictures and good lightning photos. And that's really
kind of how it started. It just slowly grew, you know,
I just would start going chasing and then it also
my daughter was also kind of part of it, because
you know, I was starting to go out a lot,
and so, you know, to to kind of justify me
being gone all the time, I would take Lyla with me.
(05:35):
She's a year and a half. She'd watch movies in
the back and to give my wife a break at night,
and it was kind of my way to be able
to get out a little more. So we kind of
started doing that together, and then every you know, every summer,
it was just kind of driving more and more around Arizona.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And then at some point I decided.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I'm going to go try to chase you know, a
supercellar tornado out in the planes and went out for
one day in like two thousand and nine or twenty ten,
and it was a horrible bust. And then you know,
a couple of days next year, a couple of days
the year after, and then that just all slowly grew.
But probably I would say if there was ever like
a conscious decision was in twenty eleven and July fifth,
(06:12):
actually twenty eleven, I had time lapsed and it was
like my third ever time lapse. I was just practicing,
kind of, but there's this monumental, apocalyptic wall of dust
coming into Phoenix. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
And then I posted that online like it within an
hour or two, and then it went viral.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It was all across the world, on all the news
stations everything.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
At that moment, I remember thinking, man, I really love
doing this, and people and then people ended up licensing
that video for commercials and all this stuff, and I'm like, man,
I love doing this and I would do it for free,
but here's people paying me for it. And so there
(06:57):
was a decision there that I'm like, Okay, I'm going
to keep doing this time lapse thing and seeing what
kind of footage I can get. And then seeing what
comes of it, and so I just kept doing that
and then slowly, you know, people would see some of
the things and license it.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
In twenty thirteen, I had another.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Good one go viral, and that's been licensed and still
licensed to this day, and so it was kind of
like confirmation that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I had made the right decision.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But then I also started putting all these time laps
clips I shot. I started putting them to music and
making little short films out of them. You know, they
started off kind of crappy in my opinion, but I
did my best. But as time went on, they got
better and better, and they would get they were more
popular that people hadn't really seen that as much that
they would get staff picks on Vimeo, they would get
(07:43):
shared on a bunch of blogs all over I get
them in film festivals and things like that. So I
think a lot of that stuff has just been kind
of a progression of just continued kind of my passion
for it is what really drives me.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It's almost like an addiction. So I never kind of quit.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I just keep going and going and going, and when
I'm out chasing, I never it's hard for me to
ever stop, you know. I mean, if I'm by myself
and there's lightning or something, I will just keep chasing,
you know. And other if there's people with me, I'm like,
you probably got to go to a hotel. Everyone's tired
and stuff. But but for me, I just go to
the ends of the earth kind of thing. And so
I think, you know, however, my story's been, it's been
(08:22):
one of just being passionate and dedicated to what I
do and kind of just continually proving that all the time.
You know, I just every year it's keep chasing, keep
getting footage, keep putting these films out, and kind of
being consistent with it. And so yeah, at some point,
you know, I had I have a book published on Amazon,
and then I got I want to emmy with the
(08:43):
local news station here that used my footage about five
six years ago.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
So I got that emmy.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So the verified you know thing on Twitter and Instagram
and all that stuff, you know, was kind of a
result of that. It's been about ten eleven years now
where just trying to be you know, really consistent, and
it's been and and as I've grown, you know, myself
in my photography and the timelape stuff, people around the
world will have kind of known me for this kind
(09:09):
of thing, like the BBC National Geographic. They come to
me for things where this year people are, you know,
they're trying to get footage for a show, and so
I'm like a forecaster for them where I'm guiding. We
just died a TV production and I was kind of
a guide, a forecaster, and a couple of years ago,
Pearl Jam license a bunch of clips from the stock
footage place I use and have all like a ton
of my footage in it. And then they did a
(09:30):
preview a little sneak trailer for it where they were
all on stage playing in the background was just my
lightning time laps flashing behind Pearl Jam. And I'm sitting
there just going like this isn't that surprising, but it's
also insanely surprising, and I just can't believe it. And
I'm really really, you know, kind of humbled and blown
away that this ever happened. I mean, all I really
(09:51):
did was want to just chase storms and take pictures
and I just love it that much and somehow this
has happened.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
And a great job on the production by our team
who really combined their efforts Madison, Faith and Robbie and
a special thanks to Mike Olbinski. And again you heard
it from him. He does take pictures of weddings and
family photos and he loves doing it. But the real
thing he loves, the passion, is the chase, and the
(10:21):
chase of storms. Lightning drew him to photography, storms pulled
him in all the way. The story of Mike Obinski.
Like so many Americans, their passion becomes their business. Their
business is their passion. His story here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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