Lighting Bolt
Lightning storm over Northern Colorado. The lightning created a purple hue in the sky as it struck.
Lightning storm over Northern Colorado. The lightning created a purple hue in the sky as it struck.
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May, 2018Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo in the middle of the street in Firestone Colorado during a storm. I take a majority of my photos in Colorado where I studied photography at the local community college.Time
This is one of my favorite photos. I remember I took this photo around 10:15 pm MST. I was ending my evening by watching a movie and as it was getting closer to my bedtime I saw several lightning strikes outside my living room window. I practice astrophotography so I had my settings pretty close to a dark sky exposure. Since this was my first lightning strike photograph I made an educated guess on my exposure in the middle of the night. This photograph is the result.Lighting
I had never photographed lightning before. I had tried in the past, but failed to capture anything more than a blurry flash of light. I took around 125 photos of the storm. After I was done photographing I wasn't even sure I had anything. When I uploaded the RAW files I found In that batch of photos was my first lightning strike!Equipment
This was shot with a canon T2i on a Sigma 18-35mm lens at 18mm. I used an aluminum tripod to set the camera up.Inspiration
My favorite thing to do during a storm was to sit out and watch the lightning. When I saw this storm outside my living room window. I rushed to my gear, guessing the exposure. I also had to guess when the next strike would happen. I pointed my camera in spot where I had seen the most lightning strikes. I sat up my tripod then started snapping away in that direction. Out of 125 photographs I found I had captured my first clear lightning strike!Editing
I did have to touch up the photograph in Lightroom. Since I was shooting at 18mm I had to crop the photo. I was still on the underexposed side of the photo so I brought up the exposure +2.80 and the contrast +20. I toned down the highlights and whites while bringing the shadows and blacks up. I wanted the trees to be almost, if not all the way black, and give some form to the clouds with shadows. My canon t2i brings a lot of noise and grain into dark photos so I had to bring the luminance up to 75. I adjusted the clarity to compensate for the softening of the image.In my camera bag
I always have my Sigma 18-35mm art lens on my Canon T2i. That Sigma lens is considered the king of bokeh since it's a zoom lens that can open up to f/1.8! I keep a canon 75-200mm lens on me as well. Since I live in Colorado and wild animals will pop up here and there I like to keep my distance when I have an unscheduled wildlife photography moment. I have a wireless shutter release that I can program. I love to take time lapse photos so I will setup my tripod, get the shot exposed, program the timing of each shot, and let it run.Feedback
The first thing to remember is that it's dangerous to be outside during a lightning storm. I live on the front range of Colorado so I don't have my view obstructed by large buildings. You're going to want to make sure you have a spot to go to when the rain comes down, especially if your gear is not weathered sealed like mine. Also be mindful of your surroundings. Animals can become scared during a storm and may pass by you during a crazy lightning storm so be aware of your surroundings. I used my 18-35mm Sigma lens which is a wide angle lens so I could get as much of the scene in as possible. It can be tough to compose a shot with lightning so going wide is the best way to go. I shot this at f/1.8 to let in as much light as possible. I do not have a lot of street lights so it's pretty dark. Since I have an older camera the photo gets noise above an ISO of 400 so I shot at an ISO of 200 to be safe. I thought of using a faster shutter speed since lightning is so fast, but it wasn't letting in enough light. So I set my camera to 1/25 of a second. I had it on a tripod and it tightened down so I wasn't worried about camera shake. To ensure I didn't have shutter shake I used a wireless shutter release. I usually use it for time lapse photography and would have used it here, but I could hardly see well enough to program it. So I manually hit the shutter release button every second which gave enough time for the camera to reset. The key take away here is this was a unplanned photography shoot. I knew rain was forecasted, but did not know about the lightning. If I had planned for this storm I would have programed my remote shutter release to go off every second. I would also suggest practicing photographing a full moon. The reason is that lightning is a bright light in the dark. The moon is a bright constant light in the dark. It will give you an idea of general settings for photographing lightning.
