A Love Letter to the Rain
I have always loved rain.
Maybe that's not surprising. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert—a place that, if you stop and think about it for too long, seems like it really shouldn't exist. A sprawling city built in a landscape defined by heat, dryness, and a water supply that was never meant to sustain millions of people. Growing up there, water was something you noticed. You noticed when it rained and I noticed it perhaps a little more than most.
I've always been a pluviophile—a lover of rain. I love the sound of it. I love the smell of the earth when the first drops hit the ground. I love watching puddles form and listening to water move through the gutters and over the pavement. I love the way a storm can make the world feel temporarily quieter, as though everything is taking a breath., but I think what I love most is what rain does to the sky. Here in Flagstaff, the summer monsoon season can transform the landscape in a matter of minutes. Blue skies give way to towering clouds, sunlight breaks through in unexpected places, and shadows race across the mountains and forests below. The same landscape I've seen a hundred times can suddenly look completely different.
The light changes.
The colors change.
The texture of the land changes.
And then, somewhere in the distance, thunder begins to roll.
Since mid-July, we've had thunderstorms moving through Flagstaff on and off for weeks. Some have arrived quietly, building on the horizon before finally spilling rain across the landscape. Others have been dramatic—dark clouds, sheets of rain, distant lightning, and those fleeting moments when the entire sky seems to be alive.
I've been watching. And, of course, I've been photographing.
One of the things I love most about photography is that it gives me a reason to pay attention. I might have watched these storms anyway, but having a camera with me makes me look a little longer. I notice the way the shadows move across the trees. I watch the edge of a storm creeping toward the mountains. I wait for the light to break through the clouds for just a few seconds. And sometimes, I set up a time lapse and simply let the storm move. There's something almost magical about watching hours of weather compressed into a few seconds—the clouds growing and shifting, shadows sweeping across the landscape, rain falling in distant curtains, and the sky constantly reinventing itself.
Water has always fascinated me. Maybe that's because I grew up surrounded by so little of it. Maybe it's because I've spent my life instinctively appreciating something that could never be taken for granted where I came from. Whatever the reason, I find something deeply comforting in all of its forms.
Clouds.
Rain.
Snow.
Rivers.
Lakes.
The ocean.
Even something as simple as watching water move across a landscape can make me stop and feel completely present. It makes me feel alive, and perhaps that's why I keep finding myself drawn outside when the storms roll in. I want to see what the sky is going to do. I want to watch the light change. I want to smell the rain. I want to stand beneath those enormous clouds and remember just how small I am beneath them. And, if I'm lucky, I want to capture a little bit of it before it disappears.
The storms always move on eventually, but for a few hours, the landscape becomes something else entirely.
And I get to watch.
