I've really enjoyed the incredible posts and hard work by so many on this thread.
I'll echo that I started it with the term "photogenic" in mind, not based on tornado number. In 2008, the Quinter I & II tornados were spectacular, but weren't easy to photograph nor particularly well contrasted during most of their cycles. In fact, the better tornado photographically was the day before about 30 miles west (also over I-70) near Grainfield (see my site at
http://stormdoctor.com/). For me, 2008 represented successful chase days with only so-so photography.
In May 24, 2004, was by far the most "epic" day I've ever chased. With >6 tornados (both mesocyclone and non-MSTs) simultaneously on the ground about me, landspouts, wedges, and cones...That was an epic day. The photos of the landspouts that day were great, the "mesocyclone" tornados were much more rain shrouded and less impressive on photographs.
Contrast this (pun intended) with Campo on 5/31/10...I had no synoptic scale hope of tornados that day...my original forecast busted, but I "settled" on where the action was shaping up...the most amazing slow-moving mesocscale blip occurred and we have my avatar photo as a result. Campo feels emblematic of 2010--a lot of these blips have occurred, many under perfect synoptic scale situations, some under situations where hope for chaseable tornados were limited (think: Bowdle, SD, and Bill Hark's amazing photo).
Both '08 and '04 had forecast days during my chase vacations that were textbook examples of severe weather generators, and both had these systems persist multiple days in a row.
What I meant when I originally posted this thread is that 2010 has been generally the most visually spectacular (as recorded on film or video) of all tornado years. Great comparisons (particularly by Skip, et al. above) show that 2010 has been a feast (rather than famine).
Could this be a bias of the number of chasers? The number of higher quality video and photo capture devices? Sure, all those things exist.
But that 2010 continues to impress with staggeringly beautifully captured tornados such as the one in MN just the other day...it's just been incredible. Just when I think, "man--that's the most amazing tornado photo ever", I see yet another new storm photo that makes me just gape...
This thread has added to the fodder (and dredged up some photos I hadn't looked at for years
!). Man, I can only hope that next year I'll be posting a similar thread about 2011's tornados!