Tag Archives: lightning

Sanctuary in the Storm

Posted by reesephoto on

I was out getting photos of barns for a local Historical society tour book being produced when thunderstorms moved in and due to the rain persisting for a while I decided to head home for the evening. Halfway home I was passing this local church and two things caught my attention. The first thing I noticed was the rain had stopped, and even better the lightning seemed to be staying in the same area and was barely moving which was somewhat unusual. Lightning is serious business so even though getting out of my truck for two minutes to set the tripod and camera up is not very long, there is a little voice saying that was close!

After setting up, then I can safely fire the camera remotely from my vehicle. What made this storm special was how it barely moved over at least a 45 minute period. After deciding where to aim my camera, I started with 4 second exposures and was not having great success catching more than a single bolt on a frame so I lengthened it to 15 seconds per shot and the image here was my best. I literally had just hit the remote shutter button and I watched as the three bolts over the church flashed almost simultaneously and then the other two bolts happened farther into the exposure. I had a single blast I caught later that was so intense I could not salvage any detail due to overexposure. Best lightning conditions I ever shot under!

Let Your Spirit Soar

Posted by reesephoto on

lightning-near-leola

This image was taken last evening from a spot I have tried to get lightning shots from several times in the past. This evening was looking like another major let down,and to be honest everything must be just right to get shots like this.You need to have lightning before the rain reaches you,you need lightning to strike where you are pointed,and you need the ambient light to be low enough to see the landscape and yet still have exposure times of eight seconds or longer.Granted you can shoot lightning at shorter times but you will waste an awful lot of frames at 1 second each till you are lucky enough to get one captured.For this shot I put a three stop neutral density on which added several seconds time to my exposure and this image happened during an eight second shot.

A friend called to tell me he was out and had just captured a strike with his new camera and that it was getting real windy where he was,and about thirty seconds later it came through where I was and I was getting a little nervous about the wind knocking the tripod over plus the lightning was getting closer,so I scampered to pack up real quick.

One very interesting thing happened this evening,and that was an Amish man came by on an open horse-drawn cart just as the lightning was picking up,and I heard him coming up the road singing almost a half mile away and he never toned down his singing one bit as he passed me. He had an open hymnal in one hand and the reigns in the other.I would describe the Amish that I have heard singing around here as more of a chant and that is what this man was doing. He looked right at me with a smile as he sang his heart out and let his spirit soar in the middle of farm country.For all I know he could have being singing, Please Lord,let me get home safe tonight. It was one of those moments that I cherish living where I do.

Passing Storm

Posted by reesephoto on

This was shot the same evening as the thunderhead image from yesterday and was pure luck to get the lightning bolts. The evening looked like it was done storming, but as I started the truck to head home, I noticed a flicker off to the right. I set up my tripod just outside my driver’s side window, and hit the shutter every 15 seconds or so in a mini burst. The bolts were very infrequent and miles away, but I happened to get these two on one shot. As mentioned before, daylight lightning is very hard without a lightning trigger, and this image was shot at f32 at a third of a second. I never stop down that far because image quality degrades at small apertures,but my only other choice would be a neutral density filter and with a 400mm lens,quality would drop as well. I captured a couple other bolts,but they were blurred due to me pressing the shutter too hard. There was actually a mini rainbow that appeared off camera for about 15 seconds as well, but disappeared before I decided to shoot it.

An exercise in frustration

Posted by reesephoto on

Yesterday we passed the 100 degree mark and as evening approached a bit of relief came through in the form of a storm front. I heard the thunder in the distance, so I grabbed my camera and made a dash for the countryside. I found an excellent location that was right on the fringe of the storm,and was rain free but I have never been so afraid to get out of my truck to try and set up my tripod.Lightning was flickering on three sides of my location and was literally within a few hundred yards as it repeatedly blasted down every few seconds.I watched some amazing bolts fire off right behind the farm I was at, but it was too close to even try setting up. I decided to try and get ahead of the storm and wait somewhere else,but it kept up with me,so I ended up hand holding the camera out my window for this image.

This shot is the only image I managed to capture a bolt on despite shooting 146 frames. I saw some really great bolts here as well, but I already knew trying to capture lightning this way was going to be an exercise in frustration. There were several times I had the camera on multiple frames and saw lightning hit repeatedly in one spot,but never captured a thing. Usually I try to shoot lightning when it’s just getting slightly dark and exposures range from 10-30seconds, so you have that window of time that the shutter is open to catch a bolt. trying to watch and capture a bolt at a 250th of a second in daylight is maddening. A lightning trigger would be great but they run several hundred dollars.This bolt was among the weakest all night, but it is the only one I got.