DSLR Photography Forum

Yesterday was a great day for photography for me. I didn't takes masses of photos, but there were some very interesting subjects at hand to shoot.
I did macro shooting for the first time and loved it, I went to a birthday party and got lots of nice family shots for my friends, and then a storm came in late in the day and I tried my hand at shooting lightning for the first time as well! All this and I still managed to have a nice relaxing with my friends and enjoy the day socially. ahhh.. I wish every day was like that.

These shots were taken from my back yard last night, and unfortunately there are some large power lines off in the direction where the lightning was striking (which I think was actually off the coast).
I couldn't be bothered going for a drive to try to get a better shot (this was the first time I'd shot lightning and had no idea how it was going to turn out), but next time I think I might have to go out and shoot it properly.





The shots themselves are at 100mm focal length (160mm full-frame equivalent) at f/8 and 200 ISO, with a shutter speed of 1 minute for the first shot and 46sec for the second shot. I was lucky with the first one that in it managed to capture three seperate strikes about 15-20 seconds apart, which is why it looks like there's so much going on.

Oh, and as I said I'd also done some macro shooting of flies earlier that day.
A bit of quick photoshopping and to my horror here's what resulted!



Giant flies and lightning stikes... a coincidence??? I don't think so! :o
When the giant alien electric flies come and attack earth and wipe us all out.. just remember who it was that warned you about them first! :o :o :o
I'm off now to go wrap aluminium foil around my head so they can't read my mind.

You have been warned!

incredible shots kombi!

the dry conditions last night made for ideal lightning photography.

the flies are cool too.

I for one, welcome our new electric fly overlords!


Lol... some awesome shots Kombi - pity about the powerlines, but even with, they're superb! I've never seen so much lightning activity all at once before! How cool...

And fortune, as they say, favours the brave! Really striking(pun actually not intended for once); thanks for sharing the exposure info. I do like to see your work; to me, you have a very fresh way of "seeing", and when I see this sort of uniqueness on this forum I get a distinct buzz of encouragement.

Flies and lightning.. no wonder you drive a kombi

Cool stuff, I was too drunk from bubs first birthday to take anything decent but I did enjoy the light show.

super lightning shots!
Peter and Long were messaging me to go storm shooting, but I was too comfortable indoors...

The flies seem to have mutated after being struck by lightning, then grown super huge and coming to attack!

Fanatastic images! Congratulations!

Thanks guys.. I was suprised how relatively straightforward it was to shoot this when the conditions are good (as they were last night).
I was also suprised how good the shots turned out - they actually look better in the photos than they did in real life! This is I guess because the flash is so brief in real life you can't appreciate the shape of the lightning, plus (with the first shot at least) you can overlay a few strikes on top of each other by leaving the shutter open for a longer time.

And thanks a lot for your encouragement Zig I love it when I see a shot of someone else's and it motivates me to go out and shoot myself (as I did with the macro shots yesterday after reading the thread on it a few days ago). If I can sometimes provide that same motivation for others then I'm really chuffed about it.

And Jamie.. congrats on your baby's 1st birthday! But I thought you were supposed to wait until they turned 18 before you take them out to get them drunk

Great lightning shots. I envy those who can capture those. It's not something we see too much of around here.

Well, this is the second thread on the same day where my only comment can be WOW!