William Lesch, "I wanted to show the power of all this stuff and we're just here underneath it."

Greg Bryan / arizona daily star

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While most stay indoors when storm clouds brew, William Lesch heads out.

"You almost have to go out and take your chances because it could open up for five minutes and be the perfect shot and you wouldn't get it otherwise," the avid outdoorsman and professional photographer said.

During a rainy day in March, Lesch, 55, climbed a ridge at Gates Pass with his 4-by-5 view camera, a wooden movie tripod he's had since he was 25 and a backpack full of Polaroid film. In a well-worn, button-down, short-sleeve shirt, khaki cargo shorts and hiking boots, he seemed underdressed for the gusty day. But his 30-plus years of photographing outdoors has taught him to anticipate our weather.

"The sun is going to come out," he said, his blue eyes squinting at the sky from beneath a "Life is Good" cap portraying a grinning kayaker. "It's going to be really good, as soon as the rain is done."

Moments later the clouds broke and Lesch ducked under the black cloth covering his large-format camera and took a minute-long exposure of the V-shaped pass and the Tucson basin beyond it — but the heart of the image was the immense and blustery clouds overhead.

He shot a dozen frames at different exposures — some focusing on the sky, others on the mountain pass and still others capturing vehicles zooming down the twisty road below — but the final product will be one image.

"I'm trying to get the feeling of time passing," he explained. "I blend a couple photos with different time frames. I'm not interested in the decisive moment. What I'm more into is getting the feeling I had when I was there."

Lesch grew up in a Midwestern household devoid of art, and only discovered photography while at the University of Cincinnati. Inspired by the work of Edward Weston, Lesch headed west in 1973 and settled in Tucson. He started a stone-masonry business that paid for his bachelor of fine arts degree in photography at the University of Arizona, and he spent a short stint as the first staff photographer at the Center for Creative Photography.

While establishing the foundations of his reputation as a commercial and artistic photographer, he also built his Downtown home by hand. It's part of his philosophy in life — balance — and it can be seen vividly in his home. His photography work fills the studio and darkroom, which now has a large-format printer where the enlarger used to be, and kayaks, snowboards, mountain bikes and other outdoor adventure gear dominate the backyard.

"I'm really passionate about it, but I wanted it to be integrated," he said of his art. "I suppose I could have gone further in my photography career if I hadn't built my own house or gone kayaking with my kids. But that's not what I wanted my life to be about."

The balance has not come at the cost of his reputation. In the '80s, Lesch created a highly popular signature style, "light painting," which involved cactus-covered landscapes accented with unnaturally bright colors.

"I had done movement with wind and water," he said of his earlier photography in the Midwest. "That's why I got into the light painting, because in the desert there is not much moving around. What is moving and changing a lot is the light."

To make a light-painting image, he would take a daytime exposure and then leave his camera in the same spot and return at night armed with large flashlights covered with brightly colored filters. He would then open the shutter again, double exposing the same slide, and use the flashlights to "paint" color on the objects he was shooting.

"When I first started doing them, they were a real surprise to me," he said. "You didn't know quite what to expect, and I loved that aspect of it. To me, that's what I'm after — that element of surprise."

He only got one shot per 24-hour period, and he had to strike a delicate balance between both exposures. If one wasn't quite right, he came back again and again to perfect the image. The final images are striking with their bright and unusual colors, but are also startlingly complex in their day/night dichotomies.

"It's this feeling that you don't know what time it is — it's a lot of different times, and I like that," he said. "The color is incidental in a way."

But it was the colors that drew attention. His light paintings became very popular, and his style was quickly dubbed "neon cactus" — a name he hated.

"I can certainly see that, but it wasn't what I was after," he said. "I was into the time thing, and I was using the colors to separate the times. But the psychedelic colors were all people saw."

After he perfected the double-exposure technique, Lesch felt he was just repeating himself and he resented being typecast.

"I stepped away from showing for a while, and it made it easier to change," he said.

His current work is black-and-white, long-exposure shots of velvety-smooth water and cottony wisps of clouds. Many are without defining locations, just water or sky. But others, such as the shot he was working on at Gates Pass, show a toy-sized city skyline under an immense and tumultuous sky.

"Tucson is secondary," he said of those images. "I wanted to show the power of all this stuff and we're just here underneath it."

Still, the project is just one of many he's pursuing. He is also working on aerial photography (the younger of his two sons is a pilot), an encaustic technique that involves layering wax pigment over photos, and he continues to support himself through commercial photography.

"I kind of work on several things at the same time," he said. "I get bored working on one thing. So much of it is seasonal, so when I can't work on one thing I can work on something else."

It's all part of his balanced philosophy. With that mind-set, he can shoot a rapid on the Salt River, then stow his camera, jump into his kayak and surf the crest of the wave as the river runs beneath him.

"That's one of my favorite things in the world," he said. "The waves keep going by, and you stay in one place. I love that feeling of being in the flow of moving things. That's what my pictures are all about."