When storm clouds gather, and the wind howls in anger, the natural reaction for most people is to seek shelter. But some run toward the danger. Photographer Liu Yijing is one of that rare breed, as he captures and frames nature’s wrath.
当风暴来袭，大多数人面对黑云压顶、狂风怒号的自然反应是寻找避风港，但有些人却选择奔向险境。风暴摄影师刘屹靖就是这稀有人群中的一员，他用相机捕捉大自然的愤怒。
For the past year, Liu, 21, has traveled about 24,000 kilometers across 11 provincial-level administrative regions in China, chasing and recording thunderstorms. From the first signs－a stronger breeze developing into a gale, a turbulent sky, and birds fleeing－he prepares for what appears to be a daunting task. In 2021, he took more than 48,000 time-lapse photos, showing Mother Nature at her most violent.
在过去一年里，21岁的刘屹靖途径11个省，跨越2.4万公里，追逐拍摄壮丽的风暴。当风暴开始酝酿，微风渐强、风起云涌、鸟儿四散，刘屹靖已做好准备，迎接这令人心惊胆战的挑战。2021年，他拍摄了超过4.8万条照片和延时影像，展现了自然之母最暴力的一面。
Liu has received a great deal of recognition for his work. His photos captured a complete supercell structure that occurred in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Aug 22. This image has been picked as the cover photo for the May edition of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, a key publication in its field.
刘屹靖的作品广受赞誉。他用镜头捕捉到了8月22日发生在内蒙古的一个完整的超级单体雷暴，该作品后被SCI期刊《大气科学进展》五月专刊收录为封面。
刘屹靖摄影作品被SCI期刊《大气科学进展》专刊收录为封面
“It is a typical supercell and I still have a vivid memory about how thrilled I felt the moment it formed. While recording, I couldn’t control myself and kept screaming,” he says, adding that the picture and video have gone viral on the internet, even among meteorologists.
刘屹靖说：“那是一个典型的超级单体，我到现在还清楚记得，看见它形成的那一刻自己有多激动。拍摄的时候，我不停地尖叫，根本控制不住自己。”他说，这些图片和视频在互联网上疯转，连气象学家也在转发。
The term supercell is used by meteorologists to describe a type of long-lasting thunderstorm that rotates and is usually accompanied by dangerous weather conditions, including hail, damaging winds and sometimes tornadoes. It contains a deep and persistent rotating updraft called a mesocyclone.
气象学家用“超级单体”来描述一种持续时间很长的旋转型雷暴，它通常伴随着恶劣天气的出现，如冰雹、破坏力极强的狂风，有时还有龙卷风。超级单体拥有深厚、持续旋转上升气流的中气旋。
He was invited in September to give a lecture on his storm-chasing experiences at Peking University’s School of Physics. He appeared on popular Chinese talk show Day Day Up by Hunan Satellite TV in February. Invited as a guest cameraman, he worked on China Central Television‘s documentaryThe Power of Nature, which premiered in January.
去年9月，刘屹靖应邀在北京大学物理学院作了一场关于追逐风暴的讲座。今年2月，他登上了湖南卫视的《天天向上》。作为客座摄影师，他参与了今年央视纪录片《自然的力量·大地生灵》的拍摄，该片于今年1月首映。
On social media platforms, such as Bilibili, Douyin and Sina Weibo, known as Range Sifang (Four Directions), he doesn’t only want to show how awesome these natural phenomena are to witness, but also tries to explain the danger and how to minimize damage.
刘屹靖在B站、抖音、微博等社交媒体平台上都有账号（“Range四方”），他不但想展现这些令人敬畏的自然现象，也试图向人们解释这些自然现象背后的危险，以及如何将灾害降到最低。
Many social media users nicknamed him “storm chaser”. A Sina Weibo user named Guanwaidelin comments that Liu’s photos and videos show how amazing and powerful nature is and how insignificant humans are. Another, called Lucia Wei, says that before Liu, storm-chasing photographers were rarely heard of in China and that it is a career for those who are not only brave, but also armed with sufficient meteorological knowledge.
许多网友给他起了一个绰号，“追风者”。一位名叫“关外的琳”的微博用户说，刘屹靖的照片和视频展现了大自然的伟力与壮美，也让我们看到了人类的渺小。另一位名叫“Lucia Wei”的网友说，在刘屹靖之前，很少听说过中国的风暴摄影师，这是一个需要勇气和足够气象知识的职业。
Gone with the wind
追风少年
Born and raised in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, Liu became fascinated with thunderstorms as a child. His favorite picture book in kindergarten was one that illustrated the manifestation of different scales of wind. While his classmates in primary school watched animated shows, his favorite TV program was the daily weather forecast.
刘屹靖出生于江西南昌，从小就着迷于风暴。上幼儿园的时候，他最喜欢的图画书讲述的是不同的风力。当小学同学都在看动画片的时候，他最爱看的是《新闻联播》之后的天气预报。
During junior middle school, he joined amateur meteorology groups on instant messaging program QQ, which attracted input from experts working in the field. This communication helped him study the subject intently. He read numerous books related to weather and climate and studied meteorological affairs online.
初中时，他加入了不少气象学爱好者的QQ群，许多气象学专业人士在这里发表观点。这些交流对他在气象领域的探索学习十分有益。他博览天气相关书籍，还在网上学习气象学相关知识。
“I realized in senior middle school that meteorology was what I wanted to do,” Liu says, adding that he opened his own account on social media to forecast weather and spread the science of meteorology.
刘屹靖说：“我高中时就意识到我想做的就是气象专业。”他还在社交媒体开设了账号来预报天气，传播气象学知识。
It was around that time he was diagnosed with chronic colitis, a bowel disorder, but he still managed to pass the national college entrance exam, yet failed to achieve a high enough score to get into his ideal school to study his dream major. On campus though he became interested in landscape photography and, in early 2020, he purchased some equipment, such as cameras and a drone, and opened a photo studio with a friend.
也是在那段时间，他患上慢性肠炎，但刘屹靖依然坚持参加了高考，只可惜分数不够，无法进入理想的学校学习他梦寐以求的大气科学专业。大学期间，他开始对风景摄影感兴趣。在2020年初，他购置了相机和无人机等设备，和一个朋友成立了一间摄影工作室。
Again, fate dealt him a bad hand, as the COVID-19 outbreak interrupted the project and he returned home due to lockdown.
然而，突如其来的疫情再次给了他沉重的一击，刘屹靖的项目被中断，他自己也回到老家居家隔离。
Just as the old saying goes: “when one door closes, another opens”, with Liu’s studio plan delayed, he started thinking about what he was really interested in recording. The majesty of thunderstorms came to mind.
“当上帝关了这扇门，一定会为你打开另一扇门。”工作室计划被推迟了，刘屹靖开始思考自己真正想要拍的是什么，浩瀚的风暴在他的脑海中浮现。
When a storm hit his hometown in 2020, Liu operated his drone to take a time-lapse video. This kick-started his career as a storm photographer.
2020年，一场风暴袭击他的家乡，刘屹靖用无人机拍摄了一个延时摄影短片，开启了他作为风暴摄影师的职业生涯。
In July 2020, he went to Inner Mongolia for his first storm-chasing trip. The location was carefully chosen as, for Liu, the region meets three conditions for photographing storms: having flat prairie terrain with no valleys or mountains, being sparsely populated and with relatively low humidity.
2020年7月，他第一次远赴内蒙古追逐风暴。这一拍摄地点是经过精心挑选的，刘屹靖认为这里符合拍摄风暴的三个条件：草原地势平坦、没有山谷或山脉，人口稀少，以及湿度相对较低。
“A strong storm can move at a speed of 50 to 60 kilometers per hour, which means that if you want to catch its pace, the average speed of the car should be about 70 km an hour,” Liu says, adding that, in crowded cities, it is almost impossible to drive that fast. On the wide-open prairies of Inner Mongolia, however, that is not the case.
刘屹靖说：“强风暴的时速可以达到50-60公里，这意味着如果你想赶上它，汽车的平均时速要在70公里左右。”他补充道，在拥挤的城市里，车开这么快几乎是不可能的，但是在内蒙古广袤的草原上，就不一样了。
“Dry air facilitates high visibility, enabling us to see storms forming even hundreds of kilometers away,” he explains. “It is important for storm chasers to be able to predict a storm’s direction.”
“干燥的空气意味着高能见度，这样我们才能看到几百公里外形成的风暴。对追逐风暴的人来说，能够预测风暴的方向是很重要的。”刘屹靖解释道。
Although his first attempt was not fruitful, on a second trip to Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, in August 2020, he took a photo that he treasures to this day.
虽然第一次尝试以失败告终，但2020年8月，刘屹靖第二次前往内蒙古呼伦贝尔时，他拍摄到了至今仍然珍视的一张照片。
“It was a supercell evolving into a squall line. In front of it, there was a shelf cloud hanging in the air like an incredible long wall, rushing toward me. To capture the complete time-lapse video of it, I stayed until the last possible minute, the point when the gusts became too strong,” Liu recalls. The wind speeds were beyond the top of the range, recorded at 24.5 to 28.4 meters per second. This was confirmed later when he listened to breaking news on the car radio.
刘屹靖回忆道：“那是一个正在演变成飑线的超级单体，前面悬着一团架子云，像一堵无比长的墙向我扑过来。为了拍到这段完整的延时摄影作品，我一直留到了最后一分钟，直到狂风猛烈到让我无法坚持。”当时风力已经超过十级 （24.5-28.4米/秒），这一点在他后来收听汽车广播突发新闻时得到了证实。
The strong wind smashed one of his cameras and Liu had to grab hold of the roof rack on his off-road vehicle so that the wind would not blow him away. The gale lasted about five minutes before the hail descended with a venom.
当时，大风砸碎了他的一台相机，刘屹靖必须拼命抓住越野车顶的行李架以防止自己被吹走。狂风持续约五分钟后，冰雹就狠狠地砸了下来。
“Although it was dangerous, the images and videos gave me confidence and encouragement that I can handle storm photography as a lifelong career in China,” Liu says.
刘屹靖说：“尽管很危险，但这些照片和视频让我有自信和勇气，把风暴摄影当作自己的终身事业。”
For him, a safe distance for shooting is between 5 km and 10 km away from a storm. He always emphasizes in his posts that storm photography is quite dangerous, warning people not to take unnecessary risks.
对他来说，拍摄风暴的安全距离在5-10公里。他总是在帖子中强调，风暴摄影非常危险，大家不要冒不必要的风险。
Beauty and the beast
美与暴力
A storm may be, in a sense, beautiful, as nature displays its raw power. But, for farmers and herdsmen, it is a question of their crops, herds and livelihoods potentially being wiped out.
从某种意义上说，风暴是美丽的，因为它展现了大自然的原始力量。但对于农民和牧民来说，一场风暴会把他们的作物、牲畜和生计摧毁殆尽。
Liu learned this lesson during one of his trips to Ulaanqab, Inner Mongolia, in 2020. After shooting for about five minutes, he heard a strange sound that was not the wind, rain or thunder. He felt an unknown danger and called to his driver, and the pair clambered into the car just in time. Within seconds, hailstones, about the size of ping-pong balls, started hitting the car’s roof. If they had been exposed to them, they would have suffered serious injury.
这是刘屹靖2020年在内蒙古乌兰察布学到的教训。那天，拍了约五分钟后，他听到了一种奇怪的声音，不是风，不是雨，也不是雷声。他预感到了一种未知的危险，立刻叫着司机钻进车里。几秒钟后，乒乓球大小的冰雹就砸到了车顶上。如果他们还在车外，一定会被砸出重伤。
That night, Liu encountered a herdsman. When he heard that Liu was a storm photographer, he got upset, saying that photographers like Liu should direct their lens toward the damage caused by storms. The herdsman, in tears, told Liu that the hail ruined his harvest.
那天晚上，刘屹靖遇到一个牧民。牧民一听说刘屹靖在拍风暴，脸色立刻变了，他说，你们这些摄影师应该多拍拍风暴造成的灾害。牧民流着泪告诉刘屹靖，他快要丰收的庄稼全被冰雹砸坏了。
“It was the first time that I really reflected on the relationship between nature and humans. Although I have read a lot about the damage and injuries caused by thunderstorms in books and reports, they are just figures and numbers, and I couldn’t really feel the pain,” Liu says.
“这是我第一次认真思考人与自然的关系。虽然我在书上和新闻里看到很多风暴灾害，但那些只是数据，我无法真正感受其中的痛苦，”刘屹靖表示。
“Previously I was just purely attracted by the storms－their astonishing beauty－but these herdsman’s words made me realize that these things that I love can mean disaster for others,” Liu says.
他说：“我以前纯粹是被风暴超脱现实的美所吸引，但是牧民的话让我意识到，我爱的这种美对其他人来说可能意味着灾难。”
As a result, he decided to do something that will help people further understand meteorology and its influence on daily life.
因此，他决定做一些事，帮助人们科普气象知识及其对日常生活的影响。
In August, he posted a six-minute video, introducing Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, an annual report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
2021年8月，刘屹靖发布了一个6分钟的视频，解读了联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会发布的气象报告《气候变化2021：自然科学基础》。
Based on his own experiences, Liu says in the post that last year, for him, was a harvest year, which indicates that there was an increase in extreme weather events in China. Many strong tornadoes and some extremely heavy rainfall hit big cities such as Wuhan, Hubei province; Suzhou, Jiangsu province; and Zhengzhou, Henan province.
结合自己的经验，刘屹靖在视频中说，去年他在摄影上收获很大，但这也意味着中国的极端天气增加了。许多强龙卷风和一些特大暴雨袭击了湖北武汉、江苏苏州、河南郑州等大城市。
Last year alone, 42 heavy downpours and 47 strong convective weather events, including tornadoes, were recorded, according to the China Emergency Information website, run by the Ministry of Emergency Management.
据中国应急管理部运营的中国应急信息网统计，仅去年一年，我国就发生了42次强降雨过程和47次包括龙卷风在内的区域性强对流天气过程。
At the end of the video, he calls on everyone to take action to restrain climate change and protect our planet.
在视频的结尾，刘屹靖呼吁大家采取行动，遏制气候变化，保护我们的地球。
“Through my videos, I hope more people will learn more about extreme weather events and be prepared before they occur,” Liu says.
“我希望更多的人能够通过我的视频进一步了解极端天气，未雨绸缪。”
