Lightning and Star Trails

Please view large...

Amazing photo, it's a 7/7 , Congrads!!

Nice but could be improved by cropping out some of the areas without bolts and lit clouds.

Excellent capture ... congratulations !

Don't crop anything, it's great the way it is. The stars are what really sets this apart from other lightning photos. Also not just one strike but two. Well done T.D.

A very electric pic! It gives energy.

This is a fantastic picture my Gosh! I enlarged it and it looked great. I just wish it was a lot bigger though because I would have taken it for a test drive as my screen background for a while. Truly stunning, so many layers of clouds and subtle tones. I love it. max points on this one. The star trails betray the long exposure. May I ask the settings you used ?(aperture and time)

Thanks to everyone for your comments and critiques! Pascal, I used the following settings for this exposure:

 

105mm f4 30sec ISO 800

Thanks a lot for the info. That seems very open, very long and high ISO. Wow, I am surprised but it's very helpful. I always tried that with a storm and never got anything, now I know why...Thanks again.

Nice shot! The many layers of differently shaped clouds and the colors really help adding that 'stormy' atmosphere. Nice lighting too...

 

The one thing I don't like is the curvature of the horizon. In some cases it can work really well, but here the pincushion distortion is a little too obvious - at least, that's what I think. I'd try to iron it out - DxO Optics Pro really works for that.

 

I'm going to give it a 6/6, which is what it rightly deserves in my opinion.

 

Best regards,

Frank

Frank--

 

Thanks for the comments. I also appreciate your attention to detail regarding the pincushion distortion. I didn't realize how severe the distortion was until I started looking at it again in Photoshop. I've heard of DxO Optics Pro, but I have never used. How does it compare to Photoshop CS3 when making the same type of distortion corrections? Again, thanks for the comments and advice!