Lightning over the Cordillera de Guanacaste

Siegfried,

Came over from Nature POTW. WOW ... outstanding, especially in large view.  Color & detail is fantastic. You nailed the exposure & the moment. Thanks for this one.

Rick

This a composite shot of several minutes worth of lightning during a

storm over Miravalles volcano (it's behind the lightning on the left)

and the rest of the Guanacastan mountain range.

Siegfried,

Thanks so much for posting this in the Nature POTW, and also for linking it to the page here. It's spectacular. I've been hoping that some dramatic skyscapes would make it into the thread and this is certainly just that. The impact is really there at full size. I can hear and feel it. Thanks for putting the work into making it happen and for sharing the amazing result.

Rick, Laura,

I'm glad you like the image. I've had the folder with all the individual images sitting on my computer since last year. Finally got around to doing something with them. I figured I've posted a lot of macro stuff so I'd post something different this week. "Nature" is a pretty broad category, so I'm sure it'll be a long time before any of us run out of interesting images to post.

Outstanding exposure,colors and quality! Well Done!

Regards! Hanan!

Siegfried, that's awesome! Really beautiful. Lucky that you were there. I tried getting a shot like this but it was too light outside still and I haven't purchased a filter to help... 

I like the deep blue at the top and how the light on the left makes the cloud formations visible.

Hanan, thanks for commenting.

Anne, you too. As far as using a filter to fix the problem, I'm assuming you mean a ND filter to allow longer exposures. I've tried and in my experience lightning shots while it's still bright out just don't turn out that well with the long exposure method. The lightning just can't compete with the ambient light due to it's short duration relative to the exposure time. Best to wait till dusk, which when I find most lightning storms happen anyway.

Thanks for the advice!