Capturing lightning in a photograph is extremely tough. It takes skill and luck. Frist important part of capturing lightning is being in a spot that has lighting. Los Angeles, CA is not really a hot spot for lightning but Minnesota is. Spring and summer produces great thunder storms and your chances of capturing lightning is increased ten fold. Then you need to setup your camera in view of the lighting.
My best friend’s wedding brought me to Minnesota for the weekend. On a side note, I attended the U of Minnesota, Twin Cites for my undergrad and it was nice to get back to the Twin Cities. After the rehearsal dinner, I dropped a few people off at their hotel then found a little nook of the city to capture some rain photos. I walked a little further down the street and discovered an amazing view of downtown Minneapolis. I setup my camera on the ground using my sweatshirt as a “tripod” to prevent camera shake. In addition, I put the camera on self timer to further prevent camera shake. This is a great technique to use when you don’t have a cable (shutter) release.
I put my exposure around 15 seconds and within those 15 seconds I captured a streak of lighting. Afterwards I screamed in joy and started dancing in the rain. There happend to be another person and the bridge and there is no way they could not of heard me.
I look forward to coming back to the Midwest to capture more nasty weather.
[...] in the sky. Saturday night had the rain clouds (see my lightning picture here). Unprepared for the rain, I had to continually wiping raindrops off my lens. I would wipe and [...]