Energetic little cloud
Dec, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I chase storms in the area and sometimes that takes me a long way from home. This shot was taken almost 400 miles from my house in a corn field somewhere in Kansas. The distance isn't so much a factor as the storm itself. I remained persistent with this one and it paid off with a lot of amazing shots that night.Time
This shot was taken at 0230 because that was the time when I finally caught the storm. I had to position myself on the trailing edge and it took me almost 6 hours to get into the perfect place. An interesting side note about this was the gravel road I took into the fields. One of the farmers in the area happened to be moving a large piece of farm equipment from one field to another. It turned towards me and the lights were blinding. If I had not watched it moving before it turned towards me I would have sworn it was a UFO skimming along the road.Lighting
This is natural light from the lightning itself. The moon was obscured by the storm clouds and at this position I was able to catch starlight west of the storm clouds (left side of the shots in this series). The sky made a very interesting transition from the raging storm to the tranquility of a clear night.Equipment
I was still shooting with a Nikon D5100 at this time on a tripod. The lens was an 18-300 Nikkor that I picked up on E-bay.Inspiration
When I was a child my grandfather used to take me outside with him during a thunderstorm and we would watch lightning together. I to this day have no fear of lightning thanks to many hours sitting on a park bench in Dayton Ohio with my grandpa. He was fearless and used to love watching the storm clouds roll by sparking lightning bolts as the rain came down. This night I was lucky and the rain was far enough away that I didn't experience a drop.Editing
I use very little post processing on all of my shots. I did some white balance, local tone mapping to bring out some of the cloud details and I think I brought the saturation up a little to get the deep green of the field. I like the raw gritty look of my shots and don't want to make them something they are not. I can photo shop the heck out of a picture to make it look perfect but that isn't real life. It is the imperfections that make life worth living. If everything were perfect then nothing would be special.In my camera bag
There are two schools of thought about equipment. Carry everything or carry the bare minimum to get what you want done. I carry everything in my bag for lots of reasons. The biggest reason is the ability to reach into my backpack and pull out exactly what I need to get the perfect shot. I also carry all my equipment for the exercise of it. When you take 60lbs of gear including, food, water and everything else from 6,000 to 14,000 ft up some of the mountains in Colorado you really get a good workout. I have two D810 camera bodies and my favorite lens is a 28-300 F3.4-5.6 Nikkor lens. The rest is just to impress I guess but here goes. 70-200mm F2.8 Nikkor, 24-70 F2.8 Nikkor, 15-30 F2.8 Tamron, 150-600mm Tamron telephoto, 50mm F1.8 Nikkor prime, 85mm F1.8 Nikkor prime, a Macro lens and a speed light that is still in the original packaging that I don't use but I do have one. The rest is cleaning equipment, a bunch of batteries because cold kills batteries and in Colorado it can get crazy cold even in the summer. There is food, plenty of water, bug spray and an assortment of memory cards along with other knickknacks to round out what I need for any season, time of day (flashlight) or weather condition (poncho, camera cover etc.)Feedback
The shot I took is controlled in the fact that I was several miles away from the storm. The series was taken using long exposure and catching whatever happens to be in front of the camera at the time. This can be dangerous and I willingly accept the risks in chasing a storm at night because the shots, to me anyway are worth it. Getting the camera to focus at night is difficult at best because most modern lenses have difficulty with the infinity setting even though they all have the symbol and are close, but not quite. It took a few out of focus shots before I was able to get a real clear one. I also had to keep moving the camera to follow the path of the storm and this shot almost didn't happen because I hadn't moved the camera in a while causing the bolt to be at the very edge of the frame. Field of view was tough to get dialed in as well due to the nature of lightning originating so high up in the atmosphere. You will have to balance width with height to ensure you get a good bolt from top to bottom. A good width will help you to get some of the really tree branch like lightning but can also make the bolts so small in the over all shot that you miss some of the details if it is too wide. Storms are very complex and I have chased them for many years. I can rough in the settings on my camera just by looking at the lightning and gauging the distance to get the field of view I want almost from the start. The rest is just knowing your camera. If you can't figure out how to set something in the dark quickly you will miss a lot of good stuff so practice during the day and learn the features of your respective camera so you are not fiddling around in the dark missing out on what is going on in front of you. I wait until after I am done taking pictures to look at them (after I get the focus and field of view set) because I have missed many bolts of lightning looking at a previous shot. I hope you enjoy my work and it inspires at least one person to pursue what they love. If lightning is your love then the best advice I can give is be aware of your surroundings because a storm can circle around and in spite of going away from you one minute it can turn on you in an instant. I have found myself many times surrounded by lightning in all directions only to realize my head was the tallest thing for miles in all directions. be safe and enjoy. Shawn.
