"It's hot as hell, honey in this room
Sure hope the weather will break soon
The air is heavy, heavy as a truck
We need the rain to wash away our bad luck
Well if the sky can crack there must be some way back
To love and only love" -U2, Electrical Storm
Last night an extremely awesome storm moved through, there were more than 1,000 lightning strikes that started more than 20 fires in the local area. Les and I went chasing it and the news stories it created. There were also a few flash floods, one of which closed US 97A overnight.
I spent a lot of time and more than 100 shots attempting to get a photo of lightning. This was my favorite, but I had an extremely difficult time picking a photo from what I got. This one will run in the local newspaper next week (to be fair, I'm kinda sleeping with the editor).
Some of my runners up include this shot,
http://picasaweb.google.com/zhmyers/Landscapes#5499470863084482066 which is cropped, but otherwise completely unedited.
This one,
http://picasaweb.google.com/zhmyers/Landscapes#5499475883159401234 which has lightning and a faint rainbow.
And this one
http://picasaweb.google.com/zhmyers/Landscapes#5499470851830903746 because I liked the juxtaposition of the lightning and the power lines.
I also got a good one of the rain,
http://picasaweb.google.com/zhmyers/Landscapes#5499470840447760738
Also, this one would have been really cool if I had been pointed a little more to the right,
http://picasaweb.google.com/zhmyers/Landscapes#5499475877527944002
So what do you think, did I make the right choice? And sorry about all the links, I just was incredibly lucky yesterday and that is pretty rare fore me.
I took several shots of empty sky after the lightning had struck or when it struck outside of the frame (it was all around us). I also found that looking through the viewfinder was limiting me, I did much better getting the camera positioned and looking up at the whole sky.
I still have yet to catch lightning in the sky...