Dance of the thunderbolts

I hope you will understand my message in spite of my bad english,

because english is not my native language. ;-)

 

This photo was taken during a summernight thunderstorm at about

midnight (exposure time 3:00 minutes). To get some effective

silhouettes in front of the flashes, I chose this point of view in

the midst of grain-fields where you can see the silhouettes of trees

beside a country road. Normally I don't cut away any part of a

photo, but in this case I wanted a panoramic photo. Because you

don't know where there will be the flashes when the thunder gets

closer, I aligned the camera in such a way, that a lot of sky was

seen on the photo. Fortunately the flashes were close to the ground,

so I could cut away a lot of the sky to get my panoramic photo.

Convincing, clear composition!

Wonderful image. Thank you for sharing your technique in achieving this shot. I have never photographed lightening but have wondered about exposure time. I like this shot very much...congrats...LJ

I love this shot...how long did it take you to get it?

Thanks for your comments.

 

I was waiting at this place for about 45 minutes. Most of the time just waiting for the lightning getting closer to me. During this time I took 3 photos. Taking photos of a lightning is very simple, but it's a matter of luck to get a photo like this and you can only see the result after developing the film. On the other photos the lightning isn't so nice. In this night I also went to another place to take some photos. Here you can see one of the results on the other place with an exposure time of 5:00 minutes:

http://home.arcor.de/lichtemomente/html/galerie/heimat/sinsheim/sinsheim_2004_016_01.htm