Night Lightning

[RangerGuy]

I took this at night in Maine at the end of the dock on the lake. I used a tripod and set for a 30 second exposure. I was surprised at how easy it was to get a decent picture.

Taken with my Sony DSC-F707 in shutter priority mode with a 30 second exposure. I removed some noise with Paintshop Pro X, cropped it, and did a quick unsharp mask.

[Saralonde]

Interesting color on this. Was that the result of your long exposure or did you change it in editing? Nice sillouettes and little bit of lightning in the distance add to the interest.

[RangerGuy]

I didn't alter the color from the original. It was pitch black outside when I took the picture - the only light was from the lightning. I suspect this combined with the cloudy skies to make the bluish color.

I used the long exposure to make it easier to catch the lightning. Most of the pictures I took, there was no lightning, and even with the 30 second exposure, the pictures came out pretty much solid black. It's amazing how dark it gets when you get away from civilization.

Thank you for your comments, BTW.

[xysmas]

The tones and composition are interesting, but unfortunatly the lightning is a bit hard to see. Good shot, just needs a bit of darkening in the middle to bring out the lightning.

[jdepould]

I think it's a good shot and good concept, but that it needs some tweaking. I'm a big fan of using the bulb setting for these kinds of shots. Lightning isn't going to get underexposed, so just capturing the bolt that you want and then releasing is going to give you a cleaner shot.

[RangerGuy]

Unfortunately my camera doesn't have a bulb mode.

I'll see if I can bring out the lightning from the background a bit in Paintshop Pro. I've been struggling with my monitor settings, trying to get them reasonable. I think I finally got them close last night and yeah, the lightning does kind of blend in.

Thanks for your comments.

[RangerGuy]

This one may be better? I compressed the midtones a bit and played with the brightness histogram to bring the brightness back.

[brianfarrell]

[QUOTE=RangerGuy;45358]This one may be better? I compressed the midtones a bit and played with the brightness histogram to bring the brightness back.

QUOTE]


Looks good to me

Nice clean bolt of lightning.

[xysmas]

Indeed - much better here. The lightning looks great and the tones and detail area all there from the original.

[RangerGuy]

Thanks. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I seem to be getting the hang of post-processing better than the photography itself