Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Mar, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken on the balcony of my apartment, which I am fortunate enough to have facing the Washington DC skyline. The view is one of the reasons I decided to rent the place. At the time, I hadn't gotten into photography yet, so I'm glad I made the decision to rent the place, as it's provided countless great capture opportunities for me since I picked photography up.Time
This was taken on the night of a pretty major storm that was over the entire metro Washington DC area, including parts of Maryland and northern Virginia. I had gotten home from work and wasn't really looking outside. However, since the storm was so severe, my living room was just light up from the lightning and I could no longer ignore it.Lighting
The one thing I remember about the lighting was that I initially set up my camera for very low light shots because it was at night, and the storm made it even darker as it cast a bit of a haze on the city lights. However, this being the first time I've tried to photograph lightning, I did not take into consideration how much additional light is added when lightning actually strikes. Most of my early shots came out overexposed because of that. After I made the adjustment, any shot I took that did not happen to catch a lightning strike were underexposed, but the ones that did catch one or two ended up looking just right.Equipment
I was using my Canon EOS REBEL T3i, which I had only purchase 6 months prior to this photo being taken. I was still using the Canon 18-55mm kit lens that came with the camera. When I bought the camera kit, I also bought a cheap 72" tripod off of Amazon to go with it, so that's what I had the camera mounted on.Inspiration
Way before I thought about taking photos myself, I've always been drawn to storm photography. Whether it's supercell storms, ominous clouds, or lightning strikes, a well done storm photo has always been able to catch my eye. There's sort of a duality to storm photos that I feel is thought provoking. If you think about it, these photos are able to portray life-threatening danger with awe-inspiring beauty. It sort of leaves you conflicted on how to feel about it. On the one hand, they can make you want to turn run the other way, but at the same time, you have a hard time looking away.Editing
I am still an amateur currently, and doing my best to learn and improve my photography, but back when I took this photo, I probably had less than 100 photos under my belt. I associated "Photoshop" with airbrushing and making fake-looking photos, and not anything that's within the normal digital workflow. With that said, this photo is a composite of 4 photos showing different lightning strikes. At the time, the only software I had that could manipulate an image was Microsoft Paint. I knew I wants to combine the 4 shots, but I had no idea how. I Googled around and ended up finding a free photo editing program that could perform a "Summation" of photos, which is essentially the Auto-Blend Layers function in Photoshop. Putting the 4 shots I took together resulted in this image. Now that I am more familiar and skilled with post processing, I have often thought about going back and doing a better edit of this photo, but every time, I decide against it. Even though there are definitely things I'd change about this photo, it's one I'm really proud of because at the time, I really didn't know enough about photography to have gotten this image, but was still able to work through it and figure it out.In my camera bag
At the time this image was taken, I essentially had everything I used, which was my Canon Rebel T3i, my 18-55mm kit lens and the cheap tripod I got from Amazon. Nowadays, if I'm just out and about taking photos without knowing exactly what I plan to take photos of, I'll usually have my camera (still the Rebel T3i), a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens, as well as a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L lens. Sometimes, I will also carry my ProMaster XC525 tripod, which is a bit more sturdy than my Amazon one.Feedback
Depending on the weather, really the most important thing is to bring your patience. Lightning is not predictable, so you're essentially going to be taking series of long exposure shots back to back until you capture what you're looking for. Sometimes the lightning will hit just out of frame, or sometimes it just stops all together and you'll take 10-20 photos that are just underexposed boringness, but it can all be worth it if you capture the one that looks great. Because lightning can really light up the sky, your shots when there is no lightning should be underexposed a little. That way, when lightning does hit, your capture ends up being the right exposure, as opposed to being overexposed. Set the shutter speed to be a decent length, keeping in mind that the shorter the exposure, the more photos you will need to take and the more often you'll be taking them. Ideally, you're using a remote shutter release, and you're going to want to just hit that as soon as the previous shot has completed. Lightning is unpredictable, so to increase your chance of capturing a good strike, you want to minimize the time your camera is not taking photos. I tend to take a lot, capturing multiple strikes, which then gives me more options on what I want to do in post, whether it's to combine any of them, and if so, which ones combine to look better.
