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Archive 2018 · Crater Lake Electricity

Mark Metternich
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Crater Lake Electricity

A projected thunderstorm rolled in after sunset as we held our positions with long exposures.

Some "Details for the more inquisitive" are below the image, as the second post in the thread.

I hope everyone is out there getting great light and enjoying the rest of the summer, heading to autumn!

All the best to you.

Aug 21, 2018 at 02:47 PM

Mark Metternich
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Crater Lake Electricity

Details for the more inquisitive:

Sony A7R2
Canon 16-35L2
16mm
25 seconds
1600 ISO
f/5.6
Cropped
Most processing was done in Lightroom Raw, and then fine-tuning in Photoshop as a 32-bit Raw Smart Object Layer.

Technique:

Usually, I use the original "The Lightning Trigger" to catch most of the lightning in my landscapes, finding it more reliable than many off brands that clients may try to save a few bucks on. But here there was no need. By carefully studying various radar projections I knew that after our sunset shoot (which turned out great) there was an extremely good chance a thunderstorm would roll on by, in the distance as we headed into the blue hour and beyond.

So, the technique was very simple. Shoot normal 20-30 second exposures for stars (depending on your desired sharpness tolerance for stars) with a wide angle, and shoot the exposures a hair darker than usual (lower ISO a bit) back to back expecting considerable strikes in the meantime. We started at about 800 ISO, 20 seconds and f/8, and some ended up at about 20-30 seconds, 3200 ISO f/2.8 as it got dark. Most only had to shoot 5-10 shots to get many strikes! This was an extremely active cell. I locked in my Sony A7R2’s manual cable release in multi-shot mode (for back to back shots) and took 20 frames at, f/5.6 and 1600 ISO. The massive amount of light produced by the multiple strikes per single exposure created amazing ambient light everywhere (and on some frames blow out from too much light).

Disclaimer:

Even though the storm was heading away, I never encourage being on top of bluffs during lighting! But having said that, as is sometimes the case with more radical photographers, no one was willing to stop shooting and go back to their car!

BTW, I have been very privileged to meet and become genuine friends with more FM members this year than ever before (meeting up with a lot of them in the SW)! I am really amazed at the dedication to this Landscape Forum. Even though numbers are down a bit, I still admire the quality of imagery and interaction here more than any other place.

I hope everyone is having a great summer into fall. I’ll be back on the road (flying back to Arizona) in a day with constant work until late fall. Sorry if sometimes my communications (PM, email, or here on the threads) are delayed.

All the best to you and yours, and great light to you!

Aug 21, 2018 at 02:47 PM

adittam
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Crater Lake Electricity

Awesome shot, as usual, Mark!

Aug 21, 2018 at 02:55 PM

Jred
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Crater Lake Electricity

Great shot, lots of strikes for sure.

Aug 21, 2018 at 05:02 PM

KCollett
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Crater Lake Electricity

Excellent image Mark.

Aug 21, 2018 at 06:14 PM

OregonSun
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Crater Lake Electricity

Very cool Mark, love the realistic cropped view of an epic storm at this local icon.

Heron

Aug 21, 2018 at 08:42 PM

JimKied
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Crater Lake Electricity

Another amazing shot from you Mark. Those lightening bolts are amazing.

It probably is intentional, but to my old eyes, there appears to be some curvature to the lake. I assume this is due to distortion at 16mm and maybe you didn't profile correct for the lens. Not saying its a bad thing, in fact I think it may even add to the image in this instance. But curious to what your thinking was.

Aug 22, 2018 at 05:59 AM

prefrosh01
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Crater Lake Electricity

Incredible image Mark!

Aug 22, 2018 at 08:03 AM

Danpbphoto
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Crater Lake Electricity

Just STUNNING images Mark!!! I lived in S. Oregon and worked at CL for a few years. Saw many stunning photo ops while there but this is one of the finest seen!
Again appreciate your dialogue of the image. Makes for some great learning.
Dan

Aug 22, 2018 at 08:45 AM

CheechzeppLn
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Crater Lake Electricity

Oh Snap!!! Lightning at the Crater... I love that the cell was far away enough that you were able to have the stars showing. Still a little snow left on the wizards hat too. Great shot and thanks for sharing.

Charlie

Aug 22, 2018 at 09:42 AM

Joseph Taub
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Crater Lake Electricity

Awesome shot! This has got to be my favorite of your Crater Lake shots (even more so than the rainbow ones). Very different from what one expects to see.

Aug 22, 2018 at 10:36 AM

junglialoh
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Crater Lake Electricity

Nice catch awesome moment dramatically well

Aug 22, 2018 at 11:42 AM

Mark Metternich
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Crater Lake Electricity

Thank you, everyone! Sorry if I do not have time to respond for a while. I fly out tonight, back to the SW for a few more go-arounds! I'll be mostly traveling until the end of fall, but I'll pop in here and there when I get the chance. Sorry for the short or quite delayed responses! Thank you for your understanding.

JimKied wrote:
Another amazing shot from you Mark. Those lightening bolts are amazing.

It probably is intentional, but to my old eyes, there appears to be some curvature to the lake. I assume this is due to distortion at 16mm and maybe you didn't profile correct for the lens. Not saying its a bad thing, in fact I think it may even add to the image in this instance. But curious to what your thinking was.

Thank you very much. The distortion was corrected here and then cropped. I believe it is the natural roundness to the immense lake. But having said that, a different issue is that I have found that getting the image to look perfectly straight is a challenge on these shots from this position. When it is literally straight, it does not look straight and people will think it is tilted. Kind of like some Horseshoe bend shots. So after the crop, I tried to find where it felt the most relatively straight. I came back to it over a series of days and this was the best I could get it to look without any funky local warping.

Also as far as lens distortion. I tend to not care much about it (unless it is a horrible lens) and never turn on the "lens corrections" algorithms in Raw as a DEFAULT setting. I don't really care what is "correct." What I care about is what looks the best to my eye. I find that during post processing workflow, after checking the "lens correction" settings I generally play with the distortion and vignetting to my taste, and more often than not I am making it even more pronounced (especially the vignetting). I generally like more flaring corners in many of my foregrounds, or clouds flaring outwards towards the corners... What I sometimes refer to as the X-Factor. I did not do this here. But, that is my general mentality for "corrections" and distortion.

Thank you for the feedback! I appreciate it! All the best for your work.

Aug 22, 2018 at 12:19 PM

Dave Dillemuth
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Crater Lake Electricity

Epic image, Mark!

Aug 22, 2018 at 12:36 PM

Mark Metternich
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Crater Lake Electricity

It’s crazy that I can be on a new location on the Grand Canyon edge that took me an entire day to get to and that I am at least five or six hours from any human being right now and I have three bars of LTE! :-) Because there were some messages from FM in my email box I decided to go on the form for moment before I take off to scout out some new locations today.

I just want to thank everyone for their comments here. I very much appreciate it. Thank you for taking precious time to communicate and give your feedback.

Joseph Taub wrote:
Awesome shot! This has got to be my favorite of your Crater Lake shots (even more so than the rainbow ones). Very different from what one expects to see.

Hi Joseph. I hope you’re doing well. Thank you very much. I too think this is one of my favorites. I know how tempting it is for us Photographers to leave the scene right after the color show is over. If I had to guess I would say maybe 90% of photographers do this. I base this on what I see in my workshops and also the images I see produced in social media. But I have found that quite often it’s AFTER the show is over, and into the blue hour or beyond that sometimes some of the most amazing and unexpected things can occur. As an example, during my Pacific Northwest workshop this spring everyone was packing it up quickly after sunset. I asked the group

“Are you sure you want to finish now? You may never be here again. And this is one of the most epic locations for Seascape in the world.”

One of my clients, out of 6, took my suggestion and went back down to photograph into the blue hour, a phenomenal see stack location. He came away with world class photos! The reason I bring this story up is because after the glorious sunset here it was very tempting to hike down, find our campsites and go to bed. But I knew that the thunderstorm might cross our path in the distance. So we took a chance, we experimented and it turned out. I find that a lot of my favorite photos are experiments like this. Where I just sit around and keep trying things even after the big color show is over.

Anyway, thank you very much for your compliment. I appreciate it very much and I hope you’re doing well!

Aug 27, 2018 at 12:39 PM

guidostow
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Crater Lake Electricity

So lovely Mark! Wonderful image! Thanks so much for sharing it, the background etc...

Aug 27, 2018 at 04:10 PM

Frogfish
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Crater Lake Electricity

Mark Metternich wrote:
Details for the more inquisitive:

Sony A7R2
Canon 16-35L2
16mm
25 seconds
1600 ISO
f/5.6
Cropped
Most processing was done in Lightroom Raw, and then fine-tuning in Photoshop as a 32-bit Raw Smart Object Layer.

Technique:

Usually, I use the original "The Lightning Trigger" to catch most of the lightning in my landscapes, finding it more reliable than many off brands that clients may try to save a few bucks on. But here there was no need. By carefully studying various radar projections I knew that after our sunset shoot (which turned out great) there was an extremely good chance a thunderstorm would roll on by, in the distance...Show more →
Great shot but even more I'm sure many of us appreciate the impromptu lesson - I know I do !

Aug 28, 2018 at 05:48 AM

Ipanematom
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Crater Lake Electricity

Great shot and processing!

Aug 28, 2018 at 10:52 AM

Brad Williams
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Crater Lake Electricity

Another keeper Mark! Nice work!

Aug 30, 2018 at 10:31 AM

bokor
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Crater Lake Electricity

Great shot all around.

Aug 31, 2018 at 04:19 PM

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