Craig LaBorde Photography

Capturing the unexpected....

One lazy summer afternoon, I was sitting at home when I heard a faint rumble of thunder coming from the backyard, toward the small six-acre pond behind my house. I knew from experience the clouds sometimes turned fierce before a storm, and I was hoping to catch something dramatic. I grabbed my camera gear and headed out to the small wooden pier at the water’s edge.

The thunder grew louder as I waited, and I spotted distant lightning arcing through thickening clouds. The storm was coming. But the clouds still looked pretty dull—just dark and heavy. I held out hope for that one epic shot. Then, out of nowhere, a solid wall of rain rushed forward, like an offensive line clearing the way for the star running back. No dramatic sky shot—just a downpour. I sprinted back to the house, heart pounding, soaked and frustrated. I wasn’t about to risk my gear.

Inside, the storm unleashed its fury. Thunder crashed like cannon fire, and lightning strobed the sky like one of my daughter’s dance recital lights. Then, just as suddenly, it was over. Five minutes of chaos—and silence.

Suddenly, an orange glow lit the backyard. I grabbed my camera again and stepped onto the pier. The air was dead calm, the pond's surface as still as glass. Above me, the clouds were like nothing I’d ever seen—bulging, rounded, glowing orange-yellow. Their eerie shapes hung low and were perfectly mirrored in the still water. I snapped away, breathless with awe.

Later, I learned they were mammatus clouds, rare formations that follow powerful storms. I’ve weathered countless thunderstorms, but that image—those clouds, that calm, that light—hangs on my wall to this day, a perfect reminder of nature’s unpredictable magic.
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The Old Pushboat

I drove an hour and a half to find her—half-sunken and silent, the old pushboat resting in the shallows at the north end of Lake Pontchartrain. She wasn’t forgotten, not by time at least. Time had tried—tried with hurricanes, with vandals and fire, with years of unrelenting sun and wave—but she held on, stubborn and proud.

I stepped lightly over the erosion rocks, careful with each step. The breeze kept the bugs down, and above me, gulls danced in the gray-blue sky, diving for their breakfast. From the nearby boat launch, outboards roared to life, their sound slicing through the quiet, their scent—oil, gas, and lake water—wrapped around me like memory.

Framing the shot, I crouched low, lining her hull against the morning light. She leaned in the water like a tired soul, but still she stood. As the shutter clicked, I imagined her voice: gravelly, patient, worn from telling stories. Tales of cargo and crew, of storms survived, of nights adrift under starlit skies. I wished she could speak.

And then I realized—she was speaking. Not in words, but in rusted steel, in scorched scars, in her refusal to disappear. She had endured. She endures.

As I packed up, I lingered a moment longer. Her lesson settled quietly in my chest: we all get weathered. But like her, we anchor in, endure the waves, and wait for the sun to return.

Sometimes, survival is the story.
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