Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

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JimFox
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p.1 #1 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

These are from last Monday in Red Rock Canyon on the edge of Las Vegas. There was a big storm front coming in, that in fact caused lot's of flooding on Tuesday. But here on Monday, it was just cool stormy clouds and lightning.

I don't have a Lightning Trigger, as it's very rare that I do see lightning. Not much of it happening in California. The lightning though was going off pretty regular in the same area in the sky so I set my composition with that in mind, and then with the Remote Release, I just locked it in to start taking continous shots. I missed some strikes but I did manage to capture a few out of the several hundred frames I rattled out. A very nice feature of shooting digital.

Now, I put a polarizer on, and then adjusted my exposure to be between 2 seconds and some as fast as a 1/2 second. Both of these are the 2 second exposures. Not really ever having a chance to shoot lightning before I was guessing a bit that a longer shutter speed would allow me the time to capture a whole lightning strike. It looks like that worked. I was also at f13, and then I just adjusted my ISO to make the exposure correct and shot it in manual so that the brightness of the lightning strike would not throw off the exposure if in an Aperature or Shutter priority mode.

I have 2 different shots, and 2 crops of those shots. All comments are welcome.

Jim

Sep 12, 2012 at 06:01 PM

DSC01
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p.1 #2 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Jim, very cool ! I think #2 and #4 with #2 being my favorite, I like the comp with the lighting on the left and the tree on the right IMO it offers the best balance, with #2 I also like the very first bush (right FG) almost all the way in the scene where #4 it falls off. If that was cropped I might go back and include it then I would say #4 is better. Great job on these. Regards,
Dean

Sep 12, 2012 at 06:50 PM

roguecoolman
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p.1 #3 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Jim,

These are very cool. I like #1 and #3 the best. I think its the combination of the cloud patterns and the position of the lighting that really sucks the viewer right in the middle where the action is. Its nice that you got a peak of the sun on the right. Was this sunset?

Did you win any money at the slots to recoup the driving costs :P

Jason

Sep 12, 2012 at 09:01 PM

John Richter
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p.1 #4 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Very nice, Jim. I think I like your crops a little better as the lightening is more easily seen. Great job with these.

I can't help but feel that the lightening might be brighter if the sky was darker. Was the sky this bright when shooting these?

JBR

Sep 12, 2012 at 09:46 PM

sachman
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p.1 #5 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

love the colours in the foreground! I love #4 !

Sep 13, 2012 at 12:23 AM

treebeard
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p.1 #6 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

#2 and #4 for me. Very nice images!

Sep 13, 2012 at 12:28 AM

Tuan Le
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p.1 #7 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Hey Jim,

These look great but I can't seem to decide if I like the crops more or not. I like the wider view but I also like the close-up on the lightning. The crops also seem to be a little bit more balanced. Either way, I like the compositions in these a lot. Was it actually this bright because it seems a bit too bright to me. The color saturation also seems a bit high to me but I know those colors can really pop under certain lighting conditions or after some rain. It's been a while since I've been to Red Rock so I might have to drop by next time I'm in the area. These images certainly encourage me to improve on the so-so ones I have from here.

Sep 13, 2012 at 03:33 AM

JimFox
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p.1 #8 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

DSC01 wrote:
Jim, very cool ! I think #2 and #4 with #2 being my favorite, I like the comp with the lighting on the left and the tree on the right IMO it offers the best balance, with #2 I also like the very first bush (right FG) almost all the way in the scene where #4 it falls off. If that was cropped I might go back and include it then I would say #4 is better. Great job on these. Regards,
Dean

Thanks so much Dean. I liked the uncropped versions because of the layout of the clouds, but yeah, the crops, (which is why I did them) do display the lightning much better.

Jim

Sep 13, 2012 at 07:12 AM

JimFox
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p.1 #9 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

roguecoolman wrote:
Jim,

These are very cool. I like #1 and #3 the best. I think its the combination of the cloud patterns and the position of the lighting that really sucks the viewer right in the middle where the action is. Its nice that you got a peak of the sun on the right. Was this sunset?

Did you win any money at the slots to recoup the driving costs :P

Jason

Thanks so much Jason, that was why the wider shots appealed to me too.

Ha ha... no money won on the slots. Gambling doesn't do much for me, other than having fun with $20 and the slots once in a while... but I was shocked a few years ago when I found out they stopped using coins and it's done on a card... the funnest part I thought was hearing the coins drop in and hopefully drop out... so to lose that and have some card you slide... it's almost like I might as well just give them my bank account #....

Jim

Sep 13, 2012 at 07:15 AM

JimFox
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p.1 #10 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

John Richter wrote:
Very nice, Jim. I think I like your crops a little better as the lightening is more easily seen. Great job with these.

I can't help but feel that the lightening might be brighter if the sky was darker. Was the sky this bright when shooting these?

JBR

Hey John, thanks so much for those thoughts! Yeah, I thought about darkening the sky more, and I will probably give that a shot tonight. But I do think that the clouds were about this dark. The sun was setting behind them, but it hadn't set yet, so there was still a bunch of light bouncing around me. The sky behind me was mostly blue...

Jim

Sep 13, 2012 at 07:18 AM

ScaryFox
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p.1 #11 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

I find the first one the most balanced. It is a fantastic shot, love it.
Ute

Sep 13, 2012 at 09:13 AM

markcapilitan
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p.1 #12 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Love these shots Jim, well done. No.1 is my favourite, but they're all great. Great colours too...you could have went crazy on darkening the clouds, but didn't...nice!

Sep 13, 2012 at 10:51 AM

Jim Bau
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p.1 #13 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

These are very cool shots Jim. I prefer the tighter crop of each shot. I agree that maybe trying to darken the skies by a half stop of so may make the lightning a bit more visible. Nice shots either way though!

Sep 13, 2012 at 01:32 PM

nburwell
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p.1 #14 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Hey Jim-

I really like your first two images. Take this with a grain a salt since I'm on my uncalibrated work monitor, but the foreground in your last two images appear to be a tad bit oversaturated. But in any case, great series! I throughly enjoy the work you post.

-Nick

Sep 13, 2012 at 02:11 PM

Henga
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p.1 #15 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Great shots here!
I like #2 the best, because of a stronger/better balanced composition. #4 is very nice too but a little bit over saturated for my taste.
In #1 and #3, the view is just too wide IMO, the tree is lost in the frame.

It would have been worth to take a vertical shot because, as Jason said, the cloud patterns combined with the position of the lightings are really nice, I think a vertical shot would have emphasized this.

Arnaud

Sep 13, 2012 at 02:50 PM

Rob Tillyer
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p.1 #16 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Lightning or not these are beautiful compositions. The first is my favourite.

Rob

Sep 13, 2012 at 08:13 PM

JimFox
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p.1 #17 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

markcapilitan wrote:
Love these shots Jim, well done. No.1 is my favourite, but they're all great. Great colours too...you could have went crazy on darkening the clouds, but didn't...nice!

Thanks do much Mark, I am glad you liked them. I did try to show some restraint on the clouds, it would have been easy to darken them more.

Jim

Sep 14, 2012 at 02:20 AM

JimFox
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p.1 #18 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Jim Bau wrote:
These are very cool shots Jim. I prefer the tighter crop of each shot. I agree that maybe trying to darken the skies by a half stop of so may make the lightning a bit more visible. Nice shots either way though!

Hey Jim, thanks so much. I appreciate your thoughts on the darkness of the clouds. As I have said, I did try to be conservative with the sky, but I am wishing the lightning would show up a bit more on my iPhone, so I may do a slightly darker version for that. Then I can print them and compare.

Jim

Sep 14, 2012 at 02:26 AM

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p.1 #19 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Good catch Jim! You always seem to be in the right place at the right time! I think I like #4 the best, the lightning shows better. I dont mind the rich saturation, I like it. Well done.
Debbie

Sep 14, 2012 at 07:18 AM

Dustin Gent
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p.1 #20 · Lightning in Red Rock Canyon

Nice colors and great lighting strike captures

Sep 14, 2012 at 07:30 AM

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