I like the intensity of the lightning and the formations of the clouds.

Lovely capture.

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^{*ProjectComment | *Xpose-it | =alwaysmotivated}

Thank you so much.

i cant help but think of trips right in football, not soccer, while looking at this. i wonder why, lol.

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all is quiet on the western front...so it seems until the body count starts to rise.

I have no idea.

Another great shot! I love how the clouds are just out there like the clueless kids in a dodgeball game

Don't recall if I asked this or not, but do you keep your finger on the shutter for these? Or do you have a cable release setup?

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"Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love." - Love Actually

"This world is made of... LOVE and PEACE!!" - Trigun

Thanks!

I sometimes use a cable release, but for these shots I just used 15 seconds as a shutter speed.

I find using the cable release for anything less than 60 seconds is unreliable, as the shots always come out at random levels of exposure, and it reduces the chance of being able to salvage lesser shots by blending them together.

That is a great point, I hadn't considered that. How often do you use the blending technique? I seem to hear about it quite a bit for shots in the dark.

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"Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love." - Love Actually

"This world is made of... LOVE and PEACE!!" - Trigun

I don't use it very often. There're a couple of situations I find it useful, though:

- When there's not much lightning, or it's very distant. Taking many exposures from the same camera position, then blending or layering them in PS gives the illusion of a much longer exposure, and can bring out a lot more detail. It also very easily burns out the brighter parts of the picture, so it's tedious to do.

- When there's impressive lightning in one shot, and impressive cloud illumination in the shot directly before or after it. This lets you have a more "complete" photo by illuminating more of the environment than just a lightning bolt sitting against a black background and a bit of a horizon.

I think [link] is the only picture I have in circulation at the moment that's a really blatant blend of two pictures.

I don't like to do it too much, because I feel it's right on the verge of faking pictures. However, the faking pictures argument is a can of worms I don't feel like opening right now.

Yah a lot of people get pretty heated on the topic of faking. In a short phrase, art is art to me If it's beautiful and moving, it's beautiful and moving!

Hmm I'm going to have to work on this technique, that shot is friggin fantastic. Thanks for that summary of when you use it, that really makes a lot of sense

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"Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love." - Love Actually

"This world is made of... LOVE and PEACE!!" - Trigun