PHOTOGRAPHY MAY HAVE introduced Lauren and Timothy Baca collectively, however storm chasing is the Moriarty couple’s love language.
Lauren grew up in East Texas, the place extreme climate was all the time part of her life. “But they were never the photogenic, beautiful storms you get on the plains,” she recollects. A portrait photographer who gravitated to landscapes to seize her love of nature and the outside, she took time throughout the pandemic to concentrate on what gave her probably the most pleasure. She started connecting with different photographers on-line and, in 2021, went on a storm-chasing journey with a pal who had beforehand led workshops with Timothy. “That’s how Tim caught wind of me,” she quips, absolutely conscious of the pun.
Timothy, then again, discovered his footing in images via the attract of a stacked supercell churning over the excessive plains close to his Santa Rosa residence. Following the large cloud formations led him to a gaggle of storm-chase tour operators, photographers, and different curious onlookers all taking within the sight. “It was gorgeous to look at,” he recollects of that first encounter. “It just bit me hard.”
The subsequent weekend, Timothy chased storms in Oklahoma and Texas, the place he witnessed his first twister. “It’s been a 40,000-mile-per-year passion ever since,” he says.
Separated by a whole bunch of miles, Timothy and Lauren began following one another on Instagram. “I kind of knew I was interested right away,” says Lauren, who works in public relations for a tech firm. But it took Timothy, who works as a supervisor on the SunZia Wind undertaking, some time to textual content again. “He thought I was just after him to go chasing,” she says, chuckling.
In September 2021, Lauren met Timothy and a gaggle of New Mexico photographers for an astrophotography outing within the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area’s Valley of Dreams. “That’s when we officially started dating,” she says. Two years later, they obtained married beneath the Bisti’s Alien Throne formation in a ceremony officiated by their mutual storm-chasing pal Justin Snead.
Like any good love story, the pursuit of a surprising shot will be thrilling all by itself. Sometimes, the climate entrance strikes slowly and there’s time to take all of it in. Other instances, it’s frenetic, with a twister on the bottom or a entrance shifting at 60 miles per hour, requiring split-second choices. “The energy of the chase is something that you will keep revisiting, even after you take the photograph,” Lauren explains. “Being able to freeze that moment is incredibly special.”
Take the June 2025 storm that resulted in Lauren’s grand-prize-winning Where Enchantment Dwells and Timothy’s first-place panorama picture, Into the Light, in our twenty fifth annual New Mexico Magazine Photography Awards. The duo had simply wrapped one in every of their Extreme Photo Workshops in Texas. After three weeks on the street, they had been exhausted. Timothy instructed staying put and catching a live performance that evening, however Lauren realized the climate forecast may imply one thing particular was brewing in jap New Mexico. So they hit the street.
The preliminary storms introduced hail and a few cool picture alternatives, however a twister warning to the west was the last word prize. While the slim roadways had been glutted with chasers all heading towards the identical space close to Nara Visa, the couple cut up off on an unpaved street towards an deserted residence Timothy had pinned on Google Maps 4 years earlier. “As the storm is getting closer, it starts to get incredibly sculpted—just beautiful and wild,” Lauren recollects. “We knew we were in for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Golden hour added some magic too, because the sundown forged hues of yellow and orange alongside the horizon under the darkish alien mom ship clouds, which had been wrapped in a halo of blues. “We had maybe three or four minutes before it was too close to fit in our frames,” Timothy recollects.
As the storm drew even nearer, they headed again down the street towards Sacred Heart Catholic Church, hoping for one more shot, when Lauren instantly shouted, “Horses, horses!” Timothy felt like they hadn’t gone far sufficient to seize the clouds, however he pulled over because the horses galloped towards the storm. “We had just seconds to get the shot, get back into the vehicle, and get going,” he says.
The pictures, taken inside minutes of one another, had been among the many many inspiring moments captured by this yr’s winners: snow capping the stays of a Navajo defensive website close to Aztec, La Virgen hanging in devotion from the rearview mirror of a lowrider in Albuquerque, and the Milky Way and Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS portray the evening sky over Dragon Ridge in Deming.
This yr’s contest drew greater than 1,550 entries from 315 novice photographers (those that earn not more than 50% of their earnings via images). The judges blindly chosen 20 prime pictures in seven classes. Over a full day, these had been narrowed to a gaggle of finalists, which had been ranked by every decide. The prime total scores decided the winners, with particular person photographers allowed to position solely as soon as per class.
The 35 honorees, together with many first-time winners, can be featured on the Tularosa Basin Gallery of Photography, in Carrizozo. Thanks to our sponsors, the winners additionally obtain some unbelievable prizes.
For Lauren, there’s one thing deeper tucked away within the eye of each storm. “It makes you feel so small,” she says. “It makes you think about your purpose in the world and appreciate the amazing planet that we live on.”