Thursday, March 09, 2006

Thunderstorm Season

I've been away at a meeting the last several days but now that I'm back I see that I need to start posting again. This is my other favorite lightning picture and I'm posting it in honor of the start of the severe weather season here in Illinois. We've had our first bought the last two days though most of it was south of here. We have gotten over 4 inches of rain in the past two days. This picture was taken last year and as you can see is vary braided which is one of the reasons I like it. I had to do some photoshop work on this though because there was a large water drop in the lower right hand portion of the picture. Luckily it was in a portion that was dark and mainly uninteresting. Hopefully I did a good enough job that you can't tell where it is (but if you look really hard at the corn line, you might be able to tell). Anyway, here's to a productive severe weather season!

5 comments:

Native Minnow said...

There was lightening in this picture? All I could see was a waterdrop that somebody tried to cover up in photo shop.

Native Minnow said...

Of course I'm kidding. This is an awesome photo. The kind I wish I could take. I'm probably getting a new digital camera with my tax return, but I don't know what kind I want yet (of course, the kind I want and the kind I can actually afford are likely going to be different things).

PsychDoctor said...

Get yourself one of those new Canon? 7.1 megapixel cameras...I think they are $350...What kind of camera do you have? I think the 7.1 mp that was cool was the same brand...

Oh, and Yin or Yang or whatever your name is...this photo would sell on Ebay if it was up long enough... Just so you know that nativeminnow isn't the only guy that can sell photos. :) It would especially sell if you could think of a cool quote to put to the right of the lightning.

PsychDoctor said...

By the way...what are your tips on lightning photos? I need to improve on my own techniques...

Michael Nannini said...

I wish I could get a new camera. Unfortunately I have a lot of high priced items that I want and not enough money to buy any of them. I have a Nikon coolpix 5700. It has plenty of options, but I don't like that I can't use filters easily and the thing I like the least about it is the AF is slow so action shots are hard to come by.

Canon's Digital Rebel takes good pictures and the AF is much quicker than what I have. Nikon's equivalent seems to take good ones as well. If I could, I just read about a new Nikon out (D200, 10.2 MP, ~$1500). If I have to dream, I might as well dream big.

As far as selling picture, I know you sell them too, so I will be jealous of you as well. Unfortunately my jealousy isn't great enough to overcome my extreme laziness.

I have found that for lightning pictures the best thing you can do is to go out when during very active storms. I have been out during average lightning storms and have taken 100 pictures with nothing to show for it. The other thing that helps is long exposure times. I have a shutter release on my camera so that I just set the camera on a tripod and keep the shutter open until I see lightning. If you don't have that just set the shutter speed on the longest exposure you can and hope you get something in that time frame.