After spending the day up in Cheyenne Wyoming with 2 of my granddaughters, I was driving back about 7pm and saw this super cool cumulous cloud to the SE. With no clouds to the West I thought that this will be an awesome sunset. By the time I got back to my daughters, I asked my oldest grandson if he wanted to run out with me to capture the sunset, and he did. By the time we got out, it was almost 8pm and sunset is about 8:20.
I went to a local River thinking it would make for a good leading line, but when I got there, the cloud had moved enough that it didn't line up. So it was off to plan B, the local pond area where I often run. Fortunately it was only about 4 minutes away. I had taken my D850 and my Infrared camera on my trip to Cheyenne, so that's what I had with me in my Jeep. For the sunset I only took my D850 and a tripod.
A few minutes walk got us to the pond area. Why the 12 year old grandson was busy catching a toad, I was busy catching the cool light and colors on the ever changing cloud structure. While I was doing this, we started seeing the occasional lightning strike off to the side (not in my composition). My daughter also sent me a screen cap of a weather warning of a severe thunderstorm over the next few hours. So I started changing my mindset from sunset to sunset and lightning.
I put on a 3 stop ND filter on the D850 so I could get a 2 second exposure, but sadly I didn't have a remote release with me, as I had moved them all when doing my Milky Way Timelapses. So I had to capture lightning the old fashioned way, standing next to the camera with my finger on the shutter button.
It worked, though I wish I had my remote releases to lock in the shutter.
The lightning started to be going off in about a 270 degree arc around our location. I changed the composition a few times, but the lightning was going crazy. It was funny that although the lightning was super bright and didn't seem too far away, there was no thunder at all. Until finally there was some thunder overhead, so I decided it was time to pack it up from the pond location and get back to my Jeep and set up again where there was some relative safety then close by in my Jeep.
Upon setting up by the Jeep, I now wanted to set up a 2nd camera. The only one I had with me was the IR camera. I had been wanting to get some timelapses done in Infrared anyway, and I thought it could be cool to get lightning on the IR camera, I set it up on another tripod. At this point I had my grandson pressing the shutter button on the IR camera with one hand, while he was holding his toad in his other hand. :O
All of that to say, this image is from that 2nd location I went to. I know.... a long way to get to tell everyone that.
At this point I am shooting 3 second exposures. I changed the ISO and aperture a bit as it got darker and darker after sunset. And it this point it was not totally dark, but it was getting a lot darker compared to sunset. I based my exposures on having the histogram at 50%. I wanted to leave lot's of room on the right side of the histogram for the lightning flashes to occur but not blown out the highlights. On this one I was at f8 and ISO 800.
I think I captured 40 or 50 lightning strikes of various degrees. Lot's of them like this one were cloud strikes. There was some ground strikes, but not many. I would say I saw several hundred lightning strikes, but with them occuring in a 270 degree arc, I only captured a small portion of them.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. This is in Greeley Colorado, north of Denver, about an hour south of the Wyoming border.
I went to a local River thinking it would make for a good leading line, but when I got there, the cloud had moved enough that it didn't line up. So it was off to plan B, the local pond area where I often run. Fortunately it was only about 4 minutes away. I had taken my D850 and my Infrared camera on my trip to Cheyenne, so that's what I had with me in my Jeep. For the sunset I only took my D850 and a tripod.
A few minutes walk got us to the pond area. Why the 12 year old grandson was busy catching a toad, I was busy catching the cool light and colors on the ever changing cloud structure. While I was doing this, we started seeing the occasional lightning strike off to the side (not in my composition). My daughter also sent me a screen cap of a weather warning of a severe thunderstorm over the next few hours. So I started changing my mindset from sunset to sunset and lightning.
I put on a 3 stop ND filter on the D850 so I could get a 2 second exposure, but sadly I didn't have a remote release with me, as I had moved them all when doing my Milky Way Timelapses. So I had to capture lightning the old fashioned way, standing next to the camera with my finger on the shutter button.
It worked, though I wish I had my remote releases to lock in the shutter. The lightning started to be going off in about a 270 degree arc around our location. I changed the composition a few times, but the lightning was going crazy. It was funny that although the lightning was super bright and didn't seem too far away, there was no thunder at all. Until finally there was some thunder overhead, so I decided it was time to pack it up from the pond location and get back to my Jeep and set up again where there was some relative safety then close by in my Jeep.
Upon setting up by the Jeep, I now wanted to set up a 2nd camera. The only one I had with me was the IR camera. I had been wanting to get some timelapses done in Infrared anyway, and I thought it could be cool to get lightning on the IR camera, I set it up on another tripod. At this point I had my grandson pressing the shutter button on the IR camera with one hand, while he was holding his toad in his other hand. :O
All of that to say, this image is from that 2nd location I went to. I know.... a long way to get to tell everyone that.
At this point I am shooting 3 second exposures. I changed the ISO and aperture a bit as it got darker and darker after sunset. And it this point it was not totally dark, but it was getting a lot darker compared to sunset. I based my exposures on having the histogram at 50%. I wanted to leave lot's of room on the right side of the histogram for the lightning flashes to occur but not blown out the highlights. On this one I was at f8 and ISO 800.
I think I captured 40 or 50 lightning strikes of various degrees. Lot's of them like this one were cloud strikes. There was some ground strikes, but not many. I would say I saw several hundred lightning strikes, but with them occuring in a 270 degree arc, I only captured a small portion of them.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. This is in Greeley Colorado, north of Denver, about an hour south of the Wyoming border.
