Thank you everyone for your comments; I know how to capture lightning now! Seriously, because I do so much trial and error, and I don’t get to shoot storms very often, I really enjoyed reading your comments.

In all actuality, you probably don’t want to take pictures of lightning the same way I did for that Virginia thunderstorm. Like I said, there are multiple ways of doing things; and this usually means there are better ways than others. However, when circumstances dictate that the best way is not possible, than it is worth the risk to be creative, and do it different ways.

Let me explain. Everyone knows that two things are absolutely necessary for this kind of photography:

1. A tripod to keep the camera steady
2. A remote release to keep the shutter opened longer than 30sec.

Well, I didn’t have either! So what did I do? I went inside, opened a window, made sure there wasn’t a screen in the way, positioned the camera on the window sill half inside and half outside, composed my shot, and then closed the window on the camera (albeit gently!) to work as a sort of vise to keep the camera from moving and a shock absorber for my finger as it held down the shutter release. Perhaps this is why the picture is a little soft, Jon, but I figure it was better than nothing.

As for technical details, they are all very dependent on the conditions you are shooting under. Is it a very dark night? Is the storm close or far away? What kind of lightning is there? Once you have your camera set up on a tripod and a remote release hooked up, keep the following in mind:

• ISO: go as low as you can go (no higher than 400). Grain is always a big problem for both dark scenes and long exposures. 
• Aperture: I set mine to f/8.0. Just like shooting fireworks, if you use a much wider opening, you may loose detail in a bolt because it is goo thick. If you use a much narrower opening, than you may loose detail in the bolt because sections may be too thin to see.
• Shutter speed: under M mode, set the shutter speed to Bulb. This way, you can hold the shutter open as long as you want. This is the key to cool lightning pictures, because it gives you the ability to capture multiple bolts of lightning in the same frame as well as adding some nice movement in the clouds.

One of these days, I’ll try putting something interesting in the foreground. In the meantime, we can be learning from others who have more experience than ourselves:

How to photography lighting –WeatherScapes

Learn how to take striking lightning images – Digital Photography School

West Virginia storms gallery –WV Lightning

The evening was warm and blustery, the gusts of wind bringing with them the suggestion of an approaching storm. Then feeble flashes of light could be seen on the distant horizon, easily perceived from my vantage point on the front porch of the Wilkes new home in the rolling hills of northern Virginia. Before too long, the night sky was consistently lit up with flashes and bolts of lightning revealing the torrents of rain issuing from the outlying clouds. Yet, where I sat, there never fell a drop. And that is why I concluded that it would be worth it to pull out the camera. Not every day does one encounter a “nonaggressive” summer storm.

Even though it had been a while since I had tried taking pictures of lighting, it didn’t take me long to tweak the camera settings to capture this simple image. Now my question to you is this: if you were in my shoes, how would you have taken pictures of the storm? Do you know what settings on the camera you would use to capture multiple bolts of lighting?

I’m sure there are several different ways of doing the same thing, but in my next post, I will explain what I have found to be an effective way of making the most of a thunderstorm.

I was going through pictures today and came across two practically identical waterfall pictures I took last month at Bond Falls State Park, Michigan. Notice how the second picture looks so much better than the first one. Both were taken on a tripod only 26 seconds apart from each other on a partly cloudy day. Notice the differences between the two:

All exposure settings during capture (including exposure bias and focus point) and slight tweaks during post-processing are identical between the two pictures; that is, except for two things: the aperture and shutter speed. A = f/8.0 at 1/200 sec; B = f/22 at 1/10 sec.

Such a small change makes such a big difference. Not only is the waterfall smooth, but the overall impression of the image is smooth. No more shadows on the foreground rock, less contrast in the background trees,  and the foreground stream running off the to the left appears to be velvet. 

My only regret: I wish I had been able to use a 2- or 3-stop Neutral Density Filter to make the shutter speed even slower. I wonder what it would have looked like then.

After Robert’s wedding, we stopped at a few places in Texas in the Dallas area. This old shed, now out of commission, was on a chicken farm that we toured. It was a drab picture originally, being taken in early afternoon. But I found a new Adjustment in Photoshop today called HDR Toning (Image > Adjustments > HDR Toning…) and thought I’d try it out. Perhaps I overdid it a little in this picture, but it’s a nifty way to make a single image (as opposed to a bracketed sequence of images) appear surrealistic.

Over the past month, while traveling through the Appalachian mountains, I have begun experimenting with taking true panoramic images. Not one image cropped to a 3:1 ratio, but a series of images side by side that, when stitched together, create a true high-res panoramic. Here are a few tips I’ve found helpful when both shooting and stitching panos:

• Shoot your series of images vertically, not horizontally. This greatly decreases perspective distortion and allows you to include more in your pano.
• Shoot on Manual mode after making a metering estimate. This way, you will not have slightly lighter or darker images in your series where in-camera metering may have changed the exposure from picture to picture.
• Keep the horizon level and in the same place on every image.
• I didn’t do this very well in the sample images below, but it’s always nice to show depth by including foreground objects.
• Leave plenty of overlap between each picture in a series. I usually overlap by thirds.
• Rotate the camera on the nodal point. The nodal point is basically the very front of your lens. So, instead of rotating where you are standing, mentally draw a line from end of the lens to the ground, and then rotate the camera on that. There are special tripods that do this perfectly, but complete accuracy is not necessary with programs like Photoshop. 
• I have found Photoshop’s Photomerge to be incredibly accurate and saves a ton of time. I usually use the Reposition option and check Blend Images Together. Cropping and touching up are still necessary, but that’s nothing in comparison the time spent in manually merging.

Hope that’s helpful for anyone who hasn’t tried creating panoramas yet.

An overlook near Ridgecrest Conference Center near Asheville, NC. That’s I40 down in the righthand corner.

View from Clingmans Dome, highest point in Tennessee. This 360 overlook is right in the middle of Smokey Mountain National Park.

This panorama, from a South Korean mountaintop in April, is an example of self-stitching. Because of how difficult it was to keep the horizon straight, I took a few pictures in the sequence crooked, and Photoshop was unable to stich it together.

Not too long ago, I read a photography tip from another nature photographer: learn to love bad weather. I wasn’t too sure about this, but I couldn’t help but think about this comment when I saw the weather forecast for last Saturday.

Saturday was going to be a relatively free day for a photoshoot, but thunderstorms were predicted for the entire 24 hour period. Should I really try putting this tip to the test?

I prepared myself as best as possible, and amidst a heavy mist, started biking toward the mountain that Adam and I had hiked to a few weeks ago. About half an hour later, the sky began to grow dark and bright lightning and rolling thunder signaled the approach of a downpour. It didn’t take me long to find a shelter to wait out the storm. But the wait wasn’t long either, and I was back on my way within a few minutes.

On a sunny day, the middle of the day is about the worst time to take pictures. But today, the heavy fog that shrouded the entire mountain, never lifted, and I was able to shoot until 2:00 in the afternoon when I simply had to return home.

The test had worked. This unique opportunity, the mother of a comparatively nice collection of images, was occasioned by the fact that I had embraced the concept that bad weather can be very good. And, surprisingly, it didn’t rain again until my return trip. Though I managed to find shelter under a bridge for part of that downpour, it didn’t really matter much because I was so close to home and my camera gear was snuggly packed away.

Bad weather is a good thing; the secret is being prepared for it. Bad weather is called “bad” for a reason: getting chilled is the beginning of a cold; wet camera gear is a step closer to getting acquainted with your local repair shop; lightning and flooding can create hazardous situations. But if you are cautious and thorough in your preparations, your bad weather excursions should actually turn out to be quite good.

Since day one in Korea, I hoped I’d have some time for birding in the nearby parks on a clear morning. Not many mornings are clear, so when I woke up a few days ago to see the sun spreading it’s fresh light over the landscape, I got up in a hurry! Though it was almost 7:00, I figured the birds would still be out for another hour or two.

I was planning on hiking out to a small pond over the hill, but on the way, I purposed to would take my time and enjoy whatever might be along the trail. To my surprise, there were many of them! Though I don’t have the greatest of equipment in the world for photographing birds, here are a few things I’ve found helpful in getting good pictures:

• Let the birds come to you; they won’t let you get close to them. There are exceptions to the rule, but generally, you will scare anything away if you try to move closer to it. I’ve done it over and over again.
• Be extremely patient. Only two birds came close enough to get a satisfactory shot during an entire 20 minute wait in one spot; and that was with dozens of them flying all around me.
• Keep the camera close to your face and have all the settings on your camera ready at any given moment. Perching birds move around quickly, and opportunities are fleeting when they are close enough to shoot.
• Position yourself close to where birds like to be. Don’t stand in the middle of a clearing; sit within “shooting range” of tree trunks, low hanging branches, or thick patches of grass.
• Do not shoot birds against the sky. This really isn’t that difficult as is really only a matter of where you position yourself. If you have to, over expose by at least one stop to keep them from being completely silhouetted against the sky.
• Focus on the eye; it is where viewers look first. And catching a glint in the eye makes the bird look alive. When it looks toward the light source, it’s the time to show off your fps!

I never made it to the pond, actually. I didn’t get too much further then over the hill by the time my hour was up. But it was worth it. The pond will have to wait for a future excursion.

My first week in South Korea was full of first impressions. Learning the culture and language is one thing; to learn and capitalize on the climate and weather patterns is quite another. These first expressions of my first impressions of Korea display my first efforts in coping with a totally new environment.

Some observations from my experience so far about early spring in the Gimpo district of Seoul, South Korea:

• Visibility is almost always low, with a more or less dense blanket of haze, fog or smog cutting distant visibility to low, if not null.
• Most mornings, the sun sets the sky to matte hues of yellow and orange, but does not last long.
• On a good evening, the sky offers broad shades of red, pink, and purple after the sun sets.

Knowing where to go is a very important thing to know. I mean, if there is a beautiful sunset, and you are stuck in the middle of an apartment complex, it’s going to be hard to get some nice landscape images. You might be able to get some nice apartment building images, but that isn’t always the end goal.

Over the past few days, getting situated here in South Korea, it has been difficult, and for good reasons, to find time to temporarily evacuate from the “apartment complex” for a photoshoot. But I have been out. And that is when I do my scouting.

An intense hike with the Wallers is great fun; but it’s not a time to make everyone wait continually for “Mr. cameraman to create his art.”

A walk to the store and back is necessary, but it’s not a time to lug around your equipment. There’s enough stuff to carry as it is.

I typically carry a little point and shoot with me on these scouting ventures. This helps me find what I’m looking for later, gives me visual ideas of where to go when I have more time, and can always fills in for if something out of the ordinary does occur.

It is during these times that I observe what is around me. Where does the sun rise? Or set? At what time of day is the sky most colorful? What days are clear and what days are hazy? Why? What locations will produce good landscape, people, cultural, or wildlife images? What buildings look most attractive? What is the fastest way to get to them?

Sometimes this is as fun as taking the pictures themselves. But it is very much worth it, because instead of getting nice pictures immediately, the end result is getting really nice pictures in the long run . . . hopefully.

Along with photography, I enjoy doing layout and design projects on the side. A business in Connecticut needed a simple sheet explaining how to pay bills using PayPal. After talking over details with the company, researching the PayPal website, and conducting a test run, I was able to throw together a document that perfectly met their needs.

You don’t have to be genius to help others out; just some practical skill, a will to work, and just enough creativity to complete a job just a little better than what the client was expecting.

Click here for a printable version