Fine Art, Low Light, Photography

Lightning storm

I watched this storm pass overhead for a while last night before setting up my camera, and missed the best of it. Here’s a few shots as it moved off down the valley.

This one is a combination of two layered and merged shots, one of the lightning at right, and a much longer exposure – I deliberately left the camera on “Liveview” mode when I headed off to bed, no more lightning but I captured some star-trails and what could be a meteor shower or perhaps a random cluster of satelites before the battery flattened.

The shot above are the merged straight of camera jpegs. Not content, I opened each RAW file and made some adjustments before merging again to get the following result.

With vibrance and saturation pushed up, the yellow are the city light of Hobart reflected on the low cloud, the blue/purple colours come from the lightning. This edit demonstrates very well how much more detail can be squeezed from a RAW file compared to a jpeg.

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TasView (Tone)

Tone Bacon - Tasmanian photographer. tasview.com

18 thoughts on “Lightning storm”

  1. Nice photos, well done! The first photo has the same dots that mine do sometimes, trying to keep the dust out of the body and lenses is a pain.

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    Reply

    1. Thanks John, I took this through my loungeroom window because it was quite windy outside, the blurred dots are likely rain on the glass. I drew the curtain behind the camera to reduce any reflections 🙂

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      1. We had one of those lightning storms this fall and it seemed like the thunder kept going for ten seconds each time, and very close. I’m nowhere near good enough with the camera to get photos of lightning, so I’m happy to admire yours.

        Liked by 1 person

  9. Pingback: 33 – Storms * – Beach Walk Reflections: Thoughts from thinking while walking

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