Dramatic lightning
A single shot and hours in the waiting with Olympus EM-1. The bright lightning emulate a sunset ray.
A single shot and hours in the waiting with Olympus EM-1. The bright lightning emulate a sunset ray.
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Jun, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken during my holiday in Penang, Malaysia.Time
It was towards the evening after dinner. I took a stroll along the beach with my camera and tripod, initially was intended to take a few night shots of the hotel I stayed. There was when I saw in the distant over the horizon out in the sea where a storm was brewing, and suddenly flashes of lightning started to appear. This was my first time attempt on lightning.Lighting
The horizon, truely, was in total darkness. You could only roughly make up where were the storm clouds by the occasional flashes of the lightning. That was when I picked up this particular spot after a few lightnings had striked out from. After setting up the tripod and camera, a few options ran through my mind on how to capture the lightnings. As was my first attempt, I had many tries to find the balanced setting.Equipment
I love my Olympus EM-1 and the Olympus 12-40mm Pro lens. It is a fantastic pairing. The tripod was a very ordinary one, so I had to set it into the sands a bit for more stability.Inspiration
I had always been fascinated with other photographers' amazing shots on lightings. They do inspired me a lot into owning my own lightnings shots. As a young learner in photography, getting the lightnings shots actually became my benchmark and evidence of improvement.Editing
I used Photoshop CS5 for the post-processing. I brightened up the foreground, i.e. the sea and beach, to give the photo the relativity of distant between the storm in the horizon and where I stood. I had also adjusted (i.e. increase and decrease) the brightness, contrast and saturation of the clouds at certain portion. At the end, I cropped the picture following the one-third rule horizontally.In my camera bag
The Olympus EM-1 is the only camera I had. For the lens, I owned the Olympus 12-40mm Pro, 60mm macro and 40-150mm. Most of the time I would carry the 12-40mm and 60mm macro. I also have the Sirui tripod (and in my favourite red colour), which is short enough when folded to be cramped into my camera bag. I do not own any external flash light yet, but flash photography would be the next level of skill I like to pick up and master.Feedback
I would not consider an advice as I'm still considering myself a young apprentice. But from the experience, here are a few tips. Foremost, you must have the patience and aim your camera at the spot where a few flashes had occurred. If it is not too dark, try focusing onto the cloud where the lightning striked out from. For this, your focusing would likely be set to infinity. For shot setting, it probably takes a few combination to find the right one. You could use mine for a start. For other professional camera brands, you probably have to be in bulb mode and wait for the lightnings to strike. Olympus higher end camera like the EM-1 comes with this function call "Live Composite" and like bulb mode, the shutter is constantly open but would not over expose the picture. I hope you also own your lightnings shots soon!
