Another thunderstorm blew through yesterday, and while it didn’t bring the fierce rains of a couple of days ago, it did put on an impressive light show after dark. Here are a few of my photos showing the clouds lighting up with each blast.
If you want to see photos of the strom from the Washoe Valley, where the bolts were actually coming down, look at Rick’s photos on Flickr. They’ll blow you away. But at least thumb through mine first.
Scott,
Great shots. I’ve tried to capture lightning just to see if I could and failed miserably. How’d you do it?
With the camera on a tripod I set it to manual and just played around with different exposures and apertures. I used the bulb setting and just left the shutter open until a good flash lit up the sky. So some of the shots are 5 seconds, and some are 30. The strike happens so fast that the shutter speed doesn’t matter. But if the exposure is too long you collect too much ambient light, especially with a bright moon out. I did have to color correct some of the pictures, because the clouds were orange from the streetlights.