Lightning

Last night as well as during daytime we had severe thunderstorms. I woke up around three 'o clock and the sky was just one big stroboscope. A couple of minutes later it started raining heavily, at which point I closed all the windows in our house. I was wide awake so I went downstairs. After having seen numerous bolts of lightning I decided to just set up the camera and try to capture the lightning, using this page as a crash course on how to actually do it.

I had this weird idea in my head that I would just come up with one of those awesome lightning photographs. What can I say; it was way too early and I wasn't done sleeping really. Anyway, about 300 shots later I ended up with exactly one image that actually had lightning on it and you're looking at it. It seems to be a discharge between two clouds as the lightning is horizontal instead of vertical. This tastes like more as we say in Dutch (well, actually we say "dit smaakt naar meer"). I might actually try to find a tall building or a another tall structure and improve my chances when trying to capture lightning. For now, I'm really pleased with this one. Go large to see some more branches in the lightning!

When I was at work, Inge called me to say that lightning had struck really near to our house. It had triggered some electrical toys to start operating without the buttons being pushed and it also triggered the fire alarm in Nienke's school. The school building also houses the nursery and there were lots of children present. Luckily it was only a false alarm. A reminder though that I should be careful in pursuing the perfect lightning shot...