Don't rain on my parade

Too nice. I love this.
I must admit, I'm starting to love shooting lightening.

Wow! This is incredible!

Holy macaroni !!!

This is amazing Daz...

Details on how you shot it in 3...2...1...

Thanks all. OK, details:
Well, as the caption reads, we went down to the beach to have a sundowner. And it started to rain. So back up to the house we went. It was dark, wet, windy, disappointing.
10 minutes later, I peeked outside, and the light was INCREDIBLE!
Like this: http://75.co.za/daz/2010/12/29

So ... grab camera, grab tripod, grab umbrella. Head out.

After a few shots of the amazing translucent light, I headed down towards the beach (about 50m) or so ... and set up the tripod.

There was a mother of a storm out to sea, and the wind had died, rain stopped where I was. My daughters started to do some 'lightning dances' and with the umbrella as a Harry Potter lightning commander stick, we started to play.

I was trying for some HDR shots, where I could combine multiple exposures and get lightning traces from each exposure superimposed on a single image. Well, it doesn't work, because when your exposures are long, the clouds move, and you end up with these cotton wool like smudges ... which don't look like clouds at all. I only found that out when I got home, and started post processing.

Basic technique was to use f-stop to push out exposure times. So shot at f/8 rather than f/2.8. Sharper too. Had to focus manually (to infinity) ... and used a 14-24mm wide angle, at 14mm.

The exposures ran from 10sec to 30sec ... and I was simply trying to judge the lightning activity. This shot came out on a 30sec exposure which was set at +2 (for HD purposes) which is why it is so 'bright' and the lightning has some seriously blown-out areas. I used Lightroom to drop exposure 2 stops to compensate ... which is what you see.

I also tried to get the WB sorted, so that the clouds remained clooud-like. The out-of camera shot is like I was on *acid* ... #colourful ...

Shooting lightning ... memorable!

OMG!!!

brilliant shot!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

*Beautiful* and *Perfect* Storm :-)

WOW!!!! At a loss for words

awesome

A single shot Sheri. Long exposure ... and caught it just before the shutter closed.
It positively fizzed across the sky!