This is an iHeart Podcast. Life's messy. We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids. But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again. At washablesofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.
Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics. That means fewer stains and more peace of mind. Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime. Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.
Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes. Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last. That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.
That's washable sofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. iHeart presents the Big Three Playoffs. This Sunday, the remaining four teams battle to make the championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game.
Then Dwight Howard and his LA Ryan take on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J Chicago Triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley and Lance Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power, who will make it to the Big Three Championship. The no-holds bought action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CBS.
Good morning. Welcome to Today. From back to school to tackling your to-do list, the Today Show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning. We're here to help you take it all off.
As the forecast calls for football all across the country. Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening. We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start is together. Watch the Today Show, weekday mornings at 7 a.m.
on NBC. My finance guy is like, you know, we talk every day about stocks. We should just shut up and bought Bitcoin. Just shut up and bought Bitcoin, forget everything else, and bank. I have all my crypto on Kraken.
Dave Portnoy trusts Kraken with his crypto.
So do millions of clients around the world. Download the app today. Get $10 in Bitcoin after your first trade of $10 or more. Just enter code iHeart10 under Add Invite Code when you sign up. Not investment advice.
Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers through Payword Interactive Inc. Terms and Conditions Apply. As a parent, you wear many hats. At dinner, you're the chef.
When your kids play, you're the ref. And let's face it, you're basically a full-time chauffeur. Fortunately, when it's time to wear your teacher hat, Abeka makes things easy. Our proven, flexible homeschool curriculum is designed to let your kids retain and build on the knowledge they acquire, setting them up for success later in life. Abeca, learning for life begins with the right homeschool education.
Learn more at Abecahomeschool.com. 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 chases storm.
Here's Mike with how he got into this unique Line of work. That was like seven or eight, a lightning bolt. hit behind your house and I was outside in the patio with my dad watching Storm. And I just remember it still vividly. Like it was so bright and intense.
I barely, 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. And that always stuck with me.
And that Came back to me, that memory came back to me when I heard some other Storm Chasers talking about why they love. Chasing tornadoes. And when they were little kids, their trailer park with their parents owned 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 or the floor to make sure they didn't, nothing happened to them. And then those boys grew up. Into teenagers, and all they want to do is chase tornadoes that are fascinated with them.
So I was like, so that's like a little origin story 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? I want to do that.
That's amazing. 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. I have a photo from high school of a really, you know, kind of crazy severe storm.
And I couldn't, I guess at the time I couldn't help. I ran outside with a camera and took a picture of the storm. And, but that was, you know, when I was like 16. Or something. And so I think that's always been there.
I just didn't ever realize that was anything I.
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, she's almost 13 now. And all I, of course, wanted to do was 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. This is fun. And then I tried to use that and get a 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 camera to do long exposures. This point and click thing is no good for me at. And she was like, all right, well, let's do it. And we. Uh sold.
All our DVDs, 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 was surprising. And made like five or six hundred bucks, bought our first real camera. And then and then from there it was taking pictures of my daughter. With a better camera, better lenses, doing cooler stuff with it. And then getting a little bit better where friends are like, hey, can you just take a funeral?
Christmas card picture for us, which is like the old story that always happens when people 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. 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.
I never decided really anything. It was just more of, I want to. chase these storms and capture these images. 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. I was just blown away.
I'm like, wow, there's people out there that That like this as much as me. And then they drive thousands of miles to chase it. And at that time, I would have been just waiting for storms around my house. I'm like, wow, I have a better camera and now I can actually drive out and try to get closer to storms that aren't right here and increase my odds of 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. You know, to kind of justify me being gone all the time, I would take Lila with me. She was a year and a half.
She'd watch movies in the back and 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. And then at some point, I decided I'm going to go try to chase a supercell or tornado out in the plains and went out for. One day in like 2009 or 2010, and it was a horrible bust. And then, you know, a couple of days the 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 2011 and July 5th, actually, 2011, I 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 was like nothing I'd ever seen before. And then I posted that online like within an hour or two.
And then it went viral, it was all across the world on all the news stations, everything. 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 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. In 2013, I had another good one go viral. That's been licensed and still licensed to this day. And um And so it was kind of like confirmation that I had made the right decision. But then I also started putting um All these time-lapse 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 more popular. People hadn't really seen that as much. They would get stab pics on Vimeo, they would get 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 been kind of a progression of just. Continued kind of my passion for it is what really drives me. It's almost like an addiction.
So I never kind of quit. 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, I probably got to go to a hotel or it'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 one of just being passionate and dedicated to what I do and kind of just. continually proving that all the time. 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 a book published on Amazon, and then I got I want to Emmy with a local news station here that used my footage. about five, six years ago, so I got that ME.
So the verified 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. We're just trying to be really consistent. And it's been And as I've grown myself in my photography and the time-lapse stuff, people around the world will have kind of known me for this kind 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, or I'm guiding B2C to TV production, and I was kind of a guide, a forecaster. And a couple of years ago, Pearl Jan licensed 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 preview, a little sneak trailer for it where they were all on stage playing in the background with just my lightning time-lapse flashy 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 did was want to just chase storms and take pictures, and I just love it that much. And somehow, this has happened. 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. in the chase of storms. Lightning drew him to photography. Storms pulled him in all the way.
The story of Mike Obinsky, like so many Americans. Their passion becomes their business. Their business is their passion. His story here on Our American Stories. Life's messy.
We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids. But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again. At washable sofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699. Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind. Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.
Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly. Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes. Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last. That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.
Upgrade your space today. Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washable sofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. iHeart presents the Big Three Playoffs.
This Sunday, the remaining four teams battle to make the championship in the most physical, fierce, and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big Three Monster Energy Celebrity Game. Then Dwight Howard and his LA Riot take on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J Chicago Triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley and Lamb Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power.
Who will make it to the Big Three Championship? The no-holds bought action starts Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 Pacific, only on CBS. My finance guy is like, you know, we talk every day about stocks. We should just shut up and bought Bitcoin.
Just shut up and bought Bitcoin, forget everything else, and bank. I have all my crypto on Kraken. Dave Portnoy trusts Kraken with his crypto.
So do millions of clients around the world. Download the app today and get $10 in Bitcoin after your first trade of $10 or more. Just enter code iHeart10 under Add Invite Code when you sign up. Not investment advice? Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S.
customers through Payward Interactive Inc. Terms and conditions apply.
Okay. As a parent, you wear many hats. At dinner, you're the chef. When your kids play, you're the ref. And let's face it, you're basically a full-time chauffeur.
Fortunately, when it's time to wear your teacher hat, Abeca makes things easy. Our proven, flexible homeschool curriculum is designed to let your kids retain and build on the knowledge they acquire, setting them up for success later in life. Abecca, learning for life begins with the right homeschool education. Learn more at AbecaHomeschool.com. Hi, it's Danielle Fischl from Pod Meets World.
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This is an iHeart Podcast. Uh
