Lightning

wpid7684-C59F6538.jpgWhen we first moved to Chicago, we had a lot of storms that came through the city which resulted in some great lightning displays.  For some reason, the number of great storms we had in the city decreased in recent years.  You could watch them come through on the weather radar but they tended to go either north or south of downtown.  However, recently we got a bit lucky.

wpid7688-C59F6706.jpgA storm came through that lasted a long time and produced a steady stream of lightning.  At first, I thought it was going to finish quickly and, by the time I could get my camera set up, it would all be over.  However, as we sat and watched, the storm continued to be a steady stream of big lightning bolts all around us.

wpid7692-C59F6909.jpgFinally, I decided it was too good to miss so I went and grabbed the camera, the tripod and the intervalometer.  I set the rig up in one room to take a steady stream of shots and then retreated to the other room.  In days gone by I have had the camera with the cable release and spent my time pressing the release as soon as the previous shot finished.  Now I set up the exposure and set the intervalometer for one second more than the exposure.  There is still a small window when the lightning might strike without the shutter open but it covers almost everything.  Plus, I don’t have to do anything.

wpid7682-C59F6503.jpgThen it is just a question of downloading the shots when the storm is over and running through to see what lightning I caught.  Fortunately, there was a lot of lightning but not much rain so the lightning did not flare out the moisture in the air and I didn’t get rain drops on the window to ruin things.  The result?  A bunch of interesting looking lightning shots.  I was happy…

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