Well, if you’ve been coming here for any length of time I’m pretty sure you have concluded that I am a bit crazy, at least when it comes to getting insane shots.
And just to conform for you that your assumptions are correct, I’m going to share the making of this image. Last night close to midnight, hunkered down for the evening with my old wobbly-legged Rottie, getting ready to watch the Twighlight Zone, I saw the telltale flashes of distant lightning through my window.
It looked like quite a storm was heading my way. The sky was full of random light, and the odd lightning fork zapped it way to earth off in the east. So, I threw on my rain gear although it wasn’t yet raining — it was actually a surprisingly warm and surreal night, storms off to the east, and clear starry midnight black skies to the west. Into the car, and down the road to the “big field” the open stretch of prairie that’s home to deer, cows, wild turkeys, amazing fog and rising mist, sunrises and sunsets that defy WOW!
In my rush I didn’t pack the tripod – a whole other story, because of the birds nesting on my deck where the tripod has been parked for several weeks, let I disturb the feathered family there! So I am prepared to do some hand-held magic, and to use the car as a support as much as it will allow. But it’s a pretty heavy traveled road and at midnight it’s prime redneck time – quads, ATVs, random speeding jerks etc. etc. I had to keep the flashers on. It was difficult to avoid their eerie glow.
I wandered over to the ditch along the edge of the field and used a fence post as my tripod. – definitely not the most sturdy support in the world.
Anyway, here’s one of the more comprehensible shots. Taken with my Nikon D800, and 24-300mm Nikkor lens. The lightning bolt, mere seconds in duration is pretty sharp, while the yard lights of an old farm, are blurred because of my shaking fancepost, shot on B at about 20 seconds, ISO 800. exposure mode was Landscape.
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