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.