Duck and Cover

This is my first attempt at this type of picture. I've always loved those cool pictures of lightning. Colorado Springs has a lot of lightning, but it's usually not visible to a large extent, at least near where I live.

Last weekend when I went to Albuquerque I ran into an amazing sunset. I wanted to get to the hotel a descent hour and passed the photo-op by. I reckoned that I'd have a good chance the next evening. Armed with some suggestions from my cousin Leslie, my mom and I took off for a spot up near the Volcanoes. I setup my tripod and took a few test shots. I was good to go! Only the weather didn't cooperate. I started seeing lightning from an approaching storm. In the back of my mind, I keep thinking of how lightning and a metal tripod would interact. I pulled out a list of alternative spots that Leslie suggested. With my eye on the evolving sunset, I drove around and tried a few. Sadly, none of the spots offered the view I was looking for.

By the time the sunset was history I had no photos worth keeping. However, the lightning from the storm was putting a quite a show. We started brainstorming on where to find a good vantage point with which to capture this show. I used to live in Albuquerque, but left almost 20yrs ago. I remembered a “make-out” spot of old and guessed that it would be a good vantage point. We had to drive all the way across town to reach it. We followed a couple of dead ends, but finally found it. It turns out that it is a decent spot, not great, but OK. It’s also still a “make-out” spot. It was a bit strange being there with my mom (not to mention a camera – what a perv, right?).

I took around 30 shots, each 2-3 minutes of exposure. This final photo is a stack of 5 photos that actually captured lightning (while still being sharp). I mentioned in the Storm I post of the difficulty of using a gorilla pod to attach to a car window. Because this is not a steady arrangement for the camera, the camera shifted position between some of the shots making it a challenge to align the photos for the stack in post production.

For those interested in trying the same sort of shot, here’s what I did:

• Used the shortest focal length I have (17mm) to capture as much of the sky as possible
• Put the camera in manual mode and used a fairly small aperture (f/11).  You need good DOF and a long enough shutter to randomly capture lightning bolts, but not too long as to get a lot of noise.
  
• Focused at the approximate hyperfocal distance
• Used a cable release to minimize vibrations when taking the shot
• Stack the photos (fairly complicated procedure that I'm not sure I could explain)
  
• After stacking the photos, cropped out the uninteresting upper section of the sky

This composition has room for a lot of improvement, but I’m happy with this first attempt.

Be sure to visit Sky Watch Friday for more views of the sky.