The Light Show

I have always wanted to capture some great lightning photos and this evening I got a chance. A heavy storm was moving toward the Tampa area. I have been studying weather patterns that involve lightning. I have several weather radars and lighting detector programs on my computer. Lightning is nothing to take lightly. It is dangerous and you can be seriously injured or killed by even an indirect strike. The Tampa Bay area is the lightning strike capitol of North America, so one of the things I do is finding a relatively safe place to shoot from. In these images, I shot from an 8 story parking garage, using the covered 7th floor. Even so, I was prepared to bug-out if the storm got to close. After all, I was still somewhat in the open and standing next to a heavy duty metal tri-pod. I was pretty pleased with the results, but would have liked to have been closer to the downtown area so I could fill the frame with the shot.

Image this...I was approximately 6 or 7 miles from this shot. Awesome power isn't it?

I got several multi-shaft strikes like this one below. The shading around the bolt is heavy rain.

This one is a favorite of mine. It has that science fiction look to me.

For you photo buffs, I used my Canon 30d with my Canon 70-200 IS F2.8 lens on manual focus set on infinity. A few of the shots were with a Tamron 28-75, f2.8. I had the camera on a heavy Gitzo tri-pod. Camera motion is critical when dragging the shutter, that is, shooting at very low shutter speeds. In this case, I set my speed on bulb and controlled the time with a Canon electronic shutter release. I would shoot about a 5 second exposure and when I caught a bolt, I would release the shutter release. If you don't, the bolt is going to act like a flash and over expose the image. My ISO was set at 320 and the f-stop for most of the shots were at 5.6 or 11. I got about 10 "keepers" out of about 100 takes. You just have to be patient! Hope you enjoyed them! C-ya!!