All right, I mean lightning bolt report and not of the title variety. Kudos to you if you understand my previous sentence. I am in the middle of falling asleep after a day of action outdoors. Shooting people, my once upon a time usual. Friends, even. They just got married. With masks and all. Masks of stormtroopers, too. But the post and the photo are not about today. They are about...
Two days ago.
The first lightning storm I observed from my currently closest window.
Some interesting camera settings follow...
Aperture 11; Shutter Speed 75 seconds; ISO 100
Some image filter applied to blur my foreground. Not because of shaky edges of buildings. Quite the contrary — because this time the blue neon inscription was readable. And I am not the type of person to edit that out. Blur the foreground instead. Big scissors. After spending so much time retouching hot pixels.
Old sensor...More than a minute of exposure...Yeah, a lot of bugged pixels there.
That shooting happened during a family evening in front of the screen which got on pause when I saw what was happening out in the falling night. The flashes were distant and almost three to five minutes apart but quite powerful. And I really had to stay with my finger on the trigger, continuously pressing it down without shaking the camera too much. That's what happens when you use the Bulb mode without a remote trigger. And a too small tripod.
I've explained the trick behind shooting bolts of lightning using Bulb mode in a whole post already. Kudos to you if you find it before I get up from sleep and post it in the comments after finding it myself. No power left in my brain t do it now before going to sleep.
Also, I love the sound of rolling thunder...deep, primeval, returning my senses back to nature and to a life not my own but ours. In such moments, I become a Jungian believer. Kudos to you if you know what I mean.
Double Kudos to you if you explain to me the etymology of "Kudos". As before, before I get up from sleep and research it myself.
Peace! And rolling thunder!
Here's the place I have to tell you that when I say Thunder I don't mean the popular AC/DC song where it sounds almost as if they are singing "Panda!" instead. Haven't noticed? Try to unhear that next time ;)
What I mean when I hear or when I say Thunder is the Iron Maiden version of associated lyrics, the song is Lightning Strikes Twice, and the line I always hear is...
"Is it the roll of the thunder that scares you?"
It could even be something else. Maybe it's just me hearing it that way.
But, no, it does not scare me. It inspires me.
Maybe I should quit shooting people and start shooting lightning storms only.
Another random report — I remember part of my this morning's dreams. I was practicing some archery again.
Yet another random report — getting out of a car today, I dropped my magnesium alloy camera with my favorite 70-200 F 4 L lens with the plastic hood on. It's some 10 cm hood in front of the lens and it was plastic enough to make the camera bounce between that part and the rubber on the bag of that heavy body. No internal injuries noticed so far. It kept on shooting stormtroopers.
The moral — with some luck, the hoods and neutral filters are good enough protection for the lenses. Keep them on while on the job.
Yours,
Manol