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A Huntsville, Ala. native stumbled across downed trees and a blocked off road in Tullahoma on Aug. 7. He saw the damage, but what really caught his eye was the Tullahoma Fire Department, who were responding to the scene. So, he snapped a few pictures.

“There was a line of storms coming through [the area],”said James Hannum, the 19-year-old stormchaser, and he was trying to catch the storms from the backside and follow them up to Knoxville, before coming across the downed tree. It blocked his path, but he didn’t regret the photos he got instead.

“[Those] are some of my favorite photos with emergency personnel,” he said as some of them ran in the Tullahoma News as part of local storm coverage.

Hannum began storm chasing three years ago, after seeing the impact of severe storms in the South during 2011.

He said the storms “put things in perspective,” because “peoples’ lives get changed from this.”

Since his origin, Hannum has traveled across the American South in pursuit of storms with his camera in tow. He works with other storm chasers, and has been to Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Mississippi.

Hannum said that preparations for the chase “start days in advance,” and that storm chasers are looking on radars and weather sites for “the best chance of a tornadic storm.”

Once he finds a storm, he spends time getting laptops, chargers, ways to communicate with other chasers and medical equipment together before heading out for the storm.

Hannum said storm chasers “try to balance safety and getting close enough to make reports” at the same time.

While he spent most of his time chasing storms with a group called “Twisted Trackers,” they “decided to do our own separate projects so we aren’t necessarily a group anymore, as we are solo projects while maintaining contact and assisting each other on major outbreak days.”

Hannum was present for the March 24 tornado that swept across Mississippi from Rolling Fork to Amory, along with previous storms that affected his family. He was touched by the response that such small communities can have to difficult situations and was struck by the abundant support those in need were provided with.

The tornado attracted the attention of Hannum’s group, and he was in Rolling Fork at the time of the massively devastating storm. He said the group spent nine hours volunteering to help those in need at the town, then drove back to Huntsville to grab more supplies before making the trip back down to Rolling Fork.

Hannum’s current project is a documentary called “Dixie” which documents storms in the South and how communities come together in the wake of great tragedy.

“The documentary will be taking place in an area commonly known as Dixie Alley,” said Hannum, “that being Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas and Louisiana.”

He said “the primary purpose of the documentary is to show just how much lives are changed and how difficult they are for chasers and spotters to make on ground reports.”

“It’s very difficult to see these forces of nature due to many of the storms being a high precipitation storm and many of them happening in nocturnal hours,” Hannum added, “The world saw just how violent these storms can be this year with the Selma, Ala. EF-2 tornado, the Little Rock, Ark. EF-3 tornado and most notably, the Rolling Fork-Silver City EF-4 tornado.”

“The goal,” he said, “is to not only show a chaser’s perspective of chasing in a high precipitation, heavily wooded and just overall bad terrain area, but to also show what communities go through, and how they come together during such a terrible time.”

Hannum wants “to show that though lives may have been lost in these storms, the soul of the South will continue. No love is short in the South.”

To see more of Hannum’s photos and learn more details about his upcoming documentary, you can visit his Facebook, James Hannum or his Instagram @jameshannumphotography