World Image issue 11 October 2014

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Capturing Lightening Paul Welch - Australia During my years of photography, I have captured pretty much most subjects and obviously my passion is wildlife. Wildlife is a great challenge to capture and it can be quite unpredictable, which leads me to something else wild and very unpredictable... Lightning. One of Mother Nature’s natural but deadly beauties and to capture this is a challenge that a lot of photographers would love to take on but wouldn’t know the first thing about how to go about it. Well now this is where I come into the equation. The first thing to remember is that you are dealing with a force that can and possibly will knock you off your feet or even Kill you if you are not careful, the last thing you need is to be in reach of a strike with a camera in your hands. Now, when you have a chance to get into capturing a storm there are a couple of things to remember... it can be an electrical, cloud or even sheet lightning storm, but all of them need specific settings on the camera. During the day depending on light you could work with f/5.6 ISO125 and an exposure time of 1/125sec. This is good for your average rolling clouds during daylight hours like this picture above from North of WA which soon became a monster of wind and rain, But no lightning in the end. So to be sure of no electrocution stay far enough away from the storm to capture it and keep a watch on what direction it’s going. Some people like to chase storms for that great shot, I like to watch and wait for it to come to me. If you listen to the weatherman and he say’s possible storms then get your camera ready to go and keep an ear out for it, also take note of the wind direction. This is of course is the safe way but you don’t always get a result when the storm passes by and you didn’t hear a thing. Where I live is close to the coast in Western Australia so when the weatherman says storms we can head to the ocean and watch for it coming in usually it’s on a westerly or North west wind. This is where the storms come from each year so it’s not hard to get ready for them. Then you get the daytime lightning. This is when the old trick of counting comes into play. You can do it in a number of ways like setting your camera up with a setting of f/22, an ISO of about 1000 to 1600 depending on cloud cover and a short shutter speed of about 4-6 seconds. Now you are wondering what I mean about counting... Do you remember as a kid you would hear the thunder and then count to the next rumble. If the counting got shorter, the storm was getting closer but if it was getting longer on the count, the storm was going away. Well that’s what I mean by the counting. Website = photosociety.net Page 28 email = magazine@photosociety.net
I captured the daytime shot (above) by counting when I knew the storm was getting closer after the first few counts then I ready myself to open the shutter for that short space of time to capture the lightning. Unless you have a screw loose), several storms were passing through our area, which you get over here when they are electrical storms. One of the storms decided to take a different path to the other storms I was almost caught on the roof with a step ladder and camera. Believe me; you have never seen someone leave a roof so fast, which also points to the fact of how unpredictable they can be. I did of course get some wonderful shots from the storms that passed at a safe distance. This was a hard way to judge things and not always guaranteed. This did take several attempts to get this shot with that particular method, but in my defence it was with a small point and shoot camera, Nikon PS4 6 mp, so it’s possible for anyone to do it with that method. I have even captured it on my iPhone with this method as seen below. It’s a good idea to be a good distance away too, so that you get the full effect of the area of the storm. It’s much easier to crop these days and you can just delete the shot if you don’t like it. Getting too close to a storm can be hazardous. This picture shows the good distance I had and the shot just speaks for itself. Nowadays though with the updated camera and all the mod cons like triggers and better quality shutter settings I can control the longer shutter speeds to capture lightning far more easily. The next two pictures were the view of storms getting a touch too close. Believe it or not though the counting technique is still in play when seeing where the storm is going and how fast it is travelling. If it is that you want to chase a storm then be careful with making sure you don’t get in its path and you know what direction it’s travelling. I have been almost caught out with shooting Lightning while on the roof of my house (NOT RECOMMENDED... The setting for the above picture was f/22 ISO 6400 on a 1/20 sec exposure. The first of the two was that close it set off car alarms and tripped the switches in the house. Website = photosociety.net Page 29 email = magazine@photosociety.net
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World Image issue 11 October 2014

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