I’m doing these in the order that I received them, so blame Jim, but we’re once again hanging out at Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. The wide shot with the light angle is dramatic enough, but the storm in the background adds a bit of atmosphere. This is the kind of composition where you need a dramatic lightning bolt, but that’s really hard in these conditions, since you cannot leave the shutter open and wait for one to happen along like you can at night. Even if you manage to extend the shutter speed to a few seconds with some esoteric light-reducing tricks like using a neutral density filter, it will improve the chance of capturing a bolt by only a small margin unless the storm is ridiculously active; meanwhile, any bolt captured will have its light reduced by the same amount and appear much weaker in the frame.
