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Schubert moved to the city in 1995 after being awarded a scholarship to study photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Once he arrived, Schubert immersed himself in the Bay’s thriving skateboarding and graffiti scene. Back on the East Coast, he’d been a prolific skate videographer, primarily in Washington, D.C. On that September day, we talked about his more recent work for GX1000, his friend’s skate company.

Best of all, we talked about the trouble he’d found himself in while taking photos of strangers doing illegal things — a habit Schubert had that reflected his audacious approach to his craft. He told me of one incident when a group of sex workers attacked him for taking a photo of them smoking crack in the Tenderloin. Mid-attack, Schubert told me, one of them began biting his finger. Hard.

“I had just watched a nature film with sharks that week though,” Schubert casually told me. “And it said if you’re attacked by a reef shark, don’t pull your hand out of its mouth because your flesh will tear. Instead, hit it in the throat so it will release you. So that’s what I did. That’s how I got the prostitute off my finger.”

Talking to Schubert, these kinds of stories weren’t unusual. They were simply how he lived his life: on the edge, always adjacent to trouble, illuminating the darkest sides of city living with his camera, so that the rest of the world might see it too.

“He had a drive and passion for his work that is hard to find these days,” says Lindsay Mape, who first befriended Schubert in 1995. “I was studying painting at SFAI and he would sneak in with me and use the dark rooms all day long to print his film, while I painted in the studios downstairs. Then we would leave and go hang in the Mission or the TL all night, finding trouble, hanging with friends, laughing and chilling with my dog.

“He didn’t have a nasty bone in his body,” she remembers. “Genuinely the sweetest soul.”

Noah Lang of the San Francisco gallery Electric Works, who first befriended Schubert in 1999, has similar memories of the photographer. “Even in his darkest times, he never had any anger,” Lang says. “He was an unstoppable force of positivity. He was very generous. He was interested in sharing everything that he had. He would have 17-year-old skaters email him saying they liked his work and he would just send them [a print]. He was not looking for fame or fortune ever. He just wanted enough money to live and make his books and that was pretty much it.

“I feel like street photographers are born noticers,” Lang continues. “They notice all the things that we see but don’t find remarkable, and then they synthesize it. Dave was a really great noticer and sythesizer of the coral reef around him. He knew everything about it. He could see it all and he would make a photo of it and turn normalcy into poetry in 1/60 of a second.”

Tributes poured in for Schubert over the weekend as news of his untimely death spread.

Artist Steve Powers wrote on Instagram: “I don’t know a better photographer that shot both skateboarding and graffiti as well as Dave did, but, as he would say about bragging, ‘Don’t tell it, show it’ … Dave Schubert didn’t take pictures, he took the time to love and to show the love.”

ANN ARBOR, MI – Clouds transforming into a funnel. Winds reaching 80 mph. A storm creeping toward the house from two miles away.

This is how Daryl Marshke remembers the first time a storm captured his imagination. Now a photographer for Michigan Creative through the University of Michigan, that tornado hit his Livingston County home during his first year in college.

Fortunately, the Hartland home saw only minor damage, with no more than a few shingles flying from the roof and some unearthed trees on the ground, he said. But much like the lightning he captures in his photography now, that storm sparked his interest in capturing the power and beauty of extreme weather.

“The intensity of that experience intrigued me,” Marshke said. “I had always liked watching the lightning and seeing the clouds rolling in. Then I got a little more into the photography aspect. Just showing the whole picture of nature.”

Marshke has combined his passions for photography and storms to capture striking images of extreme weather, from lightning around UM landmarks, such as Michigan Stadium and Burton Tower, as well as others in his personal trips around the country.

Growing up,Marshke watched National Geographic on TV, with dreams of being a marine biologist. After the storm at his house, he found inspiration through the shows “Storm Chasers” and “Tornado Chasers.”

One of his first attempts to capture a storm on camera was in May 2011 during the Joplin, Missouri tornado that killed 158 people when he was driving across the country with his wife to Arizona The category 5 twister with 200 mph winds was a challenging first attempt, he said.

“We’ve had some bad storms but these storms were a whole ‘nother level,” he said. “I’ve never experienced rain and wind like we experienced that day. It was kind of like the storms were just popping up and we’re kind of dodging them as best we could.”

The experience shaped his approach to shooting storms, as Marshke said he would make sure he was a safe distance from them moving forward to avoid danger.

One of his favorite photos is a lightning strike at Michigan Stadium, which he took in 2017 after a storm during the Michigan State game. There are two ways to capture lightning bolts: either with a camera with long exposure capabilities or by knowing which cloud will expel lightning and anticipating the strike in real-time, he said.

“There was one part of the system that was always having a lightning bolt in the same spot,” Marshke said. “So I just waited for that cloud to cut across the stadium. I had my hand on the shutter and just waited. When I saw just a little flinch of light, I hit the shutter and the two or three frames I got was able to get that shot.”

His passion for storm photography has another application in helping National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials map storms. Marshke became certified in storm chasing in 2021 and learned how storms build, the various categories of storm intensity, how to escape danger and more.

With his wide-angle lens and other equipment, he provides NOAA with “an extra set of eyes that Doppler can’t get,” he said.

“You’re able to call in (to the NOAA tip line) by storm if it’s a tornado warning,” Marshke said. “You give them your location, and that helps them identify where it’s at and how to prepare people in the surrounding area.”

In Michigan, there are an average of 15 tornadoes each year, according to Michigan.gov. That means Marshke is prepared to pick up his gear and help out officials more than a dozen times a year.

However, storm chasing always starts with his appreciation for weather’s beauty. His hope is that someday he can capture weather in different landscapes.

“I’m hoping very soon I’ll be able to go out west like Oklahoma with wide open fields and see the tornado drop,” he said. “Be low in the grass with some of the grass in the foreground and then the tornado on the the beautiful Nimbus clouds that are there and maybe a bolt of lightning.

“My passion is just about the natural beauty and power of nature.”

Read more from The Ann Arbor News:

See inside the temporary student gym at the University of Michigan

A challenging childhood inspired this Eastern Michigan grad to pursue youth therapy career

Here are even more student hangouts lost to time at the University of Michigan