Earlier this month I took a trip out to the Grand Canyon with the family. After two nights of failed sunsets, I was rewarded with a big lightning storm moving through. From the view point, I had almost 180 degrees of lightning strikes. It was a new moon, so the canyon was completely black except for the brief instants when lightning would illuminate the features. I struggled to find the right settings and was getting nervous as the storm came closer, but I think this really captures the feeling of being there.
Comments and critique welcome!
Stunning. One of the best from the area and thankfully very different.
Fotofly71 wrote:
Beautiful Photo Finnian. I would like to know how you exposed the scene.
It was basically trial and error. When I typically do a night landscape, I like streaking stars so my general settings are somewhere around 10 - 15 minutes ISO 100 @ f/5.6. With the cloud cover and the lack of moon light, I decided to try it differently. I cranked up the ISO to 3200 keeping f/5.6 and just left the shutter open till i saw a good lightning strike. If it was taking too long, I'd restart the exposure to try and cut down on noise. Looking at some exposures, I started changing up the settings, opening up the aperture and reducing the ISO. I found it difficult to nail because the intensity and direction of the lightning was variable. Sometimes it would blow out the highlights, sometimes it would only illuminate one side or the other of the canyon. I got a couple good ones and then decided to lower the iSO down to 640 and then closed down from wide open to improve the optical quality. Fortunately, this one was my favorite and it was done at the lower ISO!
