Afternoon storms

If you live in Queensland, afternoon thunderstorms are pretty normal. sometimes they can be pretty destructive too, not so long ago there were some storms that left my house and my work without power for 4 days. unfortunately I wasn't camera-ready for that one, but I was for this one.

Lightning is pretty difficult to take a photo of, especially when you only have about 10 minutes of the peak of the storm as they move so fast. you don't get to choose when to practice taking lighting photos either so that 10 minutes is pure guess work with settings.

For this, I kept taking 20 second exposures at f5.6, iso200, cpl filter. it took a while till there was a decent strike, and when I saw this one emerge from the clouds I felt pretty stoked. I kept my outside light on while taking the photos which illuminated the back garden with rich, warm colours which contrasts well with the cold, blue sky.

I think next time, using a shorter exposure time and higher iso setting would darken the sky more and make the fainter lightning pop out more. I'll also set up my laptop with EOS utility to take constant photos, that way I can set everything up and leave it to fire away until I get the right shot. But at least I got to practice and learn this time around, so that next time I'll know what settings I need and I'll get something amazing.

Almost Alien

Insects are cool. Flying insects are even cooler. So, up close and personal with a cicada should be a cool photo, right? They look almost like a creature from another world in detail, but kind of beautiful at the same time. I haven't posted anything to this blog in ages because I haven't really had the time to spend on photography lately to produce anything I'm happy with, but 10 minutes of free time and a rouge cicada in my house finally gave me something I was a little happy with.

For these I used my little old Canon 1000D with the 18-55mm kit lens, though I would have liked to have used a CPL filter to take out the bright reflections from the flash and bring out some richer colours in the cicada. I might invest in a black backdrop soon so I can use a more powerful flash without having to balance having a dark room and bright subject. After this, I let the little fella go on his way. Probably got eaten by a bat, but whatever.