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Watch out!

Eight lightning strikes over a 25 minute period of a summer storm moving from Philadelphia, PA into Woodbury, NJ.

Eight lightning strikes over a 25 minute period of a summer storm moving from Philadelphia, PA into Woodbury, NJ.
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Sep, 2014

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Awards

Action Award

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Staff Winter Selection 2015

Remarkable

Absolute Masterpiece

+17

Superb Composition

+17

Outstanding Creativity

+13

Top Choice

+12

One Of A Kind

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Behind The Lens

Location

There is a county owned parking garage near my workplace on the corner of Hunter Street and Broad Street.

Time

The work day was done at 8 pm and we'd had a series of storms over the past few days. With no after work plans, I decided to shoot the storm.

Lighting

The storm encompassed the area and I started shooting toward the Philadelphia, PA skyline. Just then, a large bolt struck off to my left and I decided to turn the camera. Using my intervalometer, I set it to take an exposure, one after another, in hopes of getting at least one good strike. After the last large bolt, the next one struck nearly overhead, thus not catching it on camera, and it opened up the sky!

Equipment

Canon 1100D/T3 with the Sigma 10-20 F/4-5.6 set at 10mm. Camera was mounted on a Manfroto tripod and the intervalometer.

Inspiration

I love lightning!

Editing

I used Lightroom to straighten the horizon and sort out the non-strikes. One I found my shots, I exported them as tifs and put them into StarStaX to stack them together, saved as a tif file and then brought back into Lightroom to adjust levels like saturation and contrast.

In my camera bag

Canon T3 with Neewer battery grip and 4 batteries, monopod and tripod, intervalometer, Sigma 10-20mm, Canon 28-135mm USM, Canon 75-300mm and Canon 50mm F/1.8. For night time photography, I have an assortment of lights for light painting and navigation as well as a compass and binoculars. For flash photography I use a Neewer TT560 ETTL flash and an assortment of modifiers.

Feedback

Get to a safe area and the more open are you can see the better. Have patience and enjoy the show while the camera does the work!

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mhickmanphoto

Watch out!

Eight lightning strikes over a 25 minute period of a summer storm moving from Philadelphia, PA into Woodbury, NJ.

Behind The Lens

See more amazing photos, follow mhickmanphoto

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