Last night’s (or early this morning’s) activities were quite scattered. So, let me spell this out for you. I already had the duckling video done – that was from the previous evening – and was planning to post it. I’d also been out after the duckling video was shot to get the lightning pics and video, and they were also posted by last night. But another storm was rolling in and looking promising, so I planned to go back down to the waterfront – and as I was grabbing my sandals to do that, I heard the turtle in the trash can (I think I just found the name of my eventual novel.) So, take that one out into the yard to do the detail shots. While that was going on, I heard a splash from the pond, and investigating that after the turtle had begun its trek back to the pond revealed the wood duck brood on Turtle Island. Two quick shots of them, though I had the 18-135 lens mounted and the macro flash; I’d removed the softbox, but this rig was still inadequate to get a decent pic and the mama was already moving off the island with her brood, so I let them be. Down to the waterfront, fire off numerous time exposures in the hope that the lightning that I’d seen would become more prevalent, it did not and died out instead, and I packed up and headed home.
Okay, write and post the turtle trash can story. Upload the duckling video and start writing the post. Realize I have no still images to go with that post and wonder if the mama had returned with her brood. Grab up Beav Team Six (the telephoto night shooting rig) and go out there carefully, determine that she had and get a couple of excellent frames. Meanwhile, the lightning alerts had been going off sporadically on the phone and, upon checking, I notice that another distinct cell is coming straight in for the waterfront. Switch Beav Team Six out for lightning shots and go back down to the waterfront.
Now, while a couple of very bright flashes had lit up the sky while I was traveling down there (which takes literally just a couple of minutes,) upon setting up on the water, they’d largely gone away. One bright flash had convinced me to aim more downriver, and so I was framing a darker section now and going with 30-second exposures. It was raining very, very gently, little more than occasional drops, but I knew it would likely get worse. And as I stood out there, I heard a soft hiss from the far side of the river, growing in intensity.
I’ve heard that before and knew it for what it was: the rain coming across the river in my direction. I said to myself, Last exposure, and just before I unlocked the cable release to close the shutter, the sky lit up well downriver. Closed the shutter, confirmed that something had indeed been captured at the edge of the frame (chimping! I feel so dirty,) and started packing the equipment away as the hissing grew ever closer. The camera was in the bag as the rain began, and I got fairly wet as I marched back to the car while breaking down the tripod (which took about a minute.) But with only six frames in literally three minutes, I actually captured something.
Except – there’s really not a lot to see, is there? F8 at ISO 400 was still letting in too much light in that tiny fraction of a second that the lightning existed, so this was one hella bright strike. Seeing that faint hint of outlying bolts, I cropped in and slammed the Curves all the way down to see if the outline of the main bolt could be made out.
Great – now I just made a nuclear first strike. It’s clear that the bolt exceeded the dynamic range of the image by a huge margin so, not really what I was after. Notably, the thunder didn’t roll across until after I was halfway to the car, so better than thirty seconds later – that translates to more than ten kilometers off, though I really wish I’d thought to start counting when I saw it.
And then, I returned home, took the crucial equipment out of the bag to let the bag dry (it’s been treated with water-repellent spray but you never trust that implicitly,) and finished the previous duckling post. And with this posted, I still have, like, three more subjects in the queue as well as a post that I’ve already finished but have been waiting for a quiet time to let through. This assumes that I don’t find anything else in the interim that I decide needs to bump ahead…