{"id":31739,"date":"2022-05-06T21:24:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-07T01:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=31739"},"modified":"2022-05-06T21:24:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-07T01:24:54","slug":"the-easiest-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2022\/05\/the-easiest-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"The easiest yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a day of severe storm threats, alternating rain and sun, and tornado watches, but after dinner, I heard thunder about the same time that I was getting lightning strike alerts, and checked the Real Time Lightning Map<\/a>:<\/strong> lots of strikes south of my location, but what looked like increasing activity to the west. I figured I’d give it a shot, and grabbed the camera and tripod and hiked it over to the neighborhood pond, knowing I had little time to spare.<\/p>\n

Naturally, I saw one brilliant strike as the shutter was closed, but I waited it out – which hardly gives the right impression, because I didn’t have long to wait.<\/p>\n

\"lightning
It was dusk, with a little light still left in the sky, so I was slowly lengthening my exposures from 12 to 30 seconds or so. I was rewarded with this strike, and this is full frame;<\/strong> we can go in a little closer with a tighter crop for better framing:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"closer
You can see that the wind and the rain have already roughed up the surface of the pond and all reflections. This exposure gives a decent idea of what I could see without the lightning, and I was watching to see if any beavers might want to get into the shot, though they remained out of sight.<\/p>\n

But I could feel the wind picking up and the rain getting stronger – not like a front, but like a cell, gusty and sporadic. And then the wind really<\/em> started to pick up. I had my hand on the tripod steadying it for this next frame.<\/p>\n

\"closer
Even as brief as it was, I got the impression it was significantly closer, which the thunder confirmed, and the wind was roaring now. Still not close<\/em> – several kilometers off – but lightning strikes can be unpredictable and the storm was serious by now. This was the last frame (uncropped at 18mm focal length, by the way,) and I immediately packed it up and headed back, not sure if I’d overstayed my time and wouldn’t be soaked before I got home. As it was, I was a bit damp, but the downpour held off long enough. Meanwhile, the lightning that seemed to be heading right in for a window-rattler died out almost as soon as I got home.<\/p>\n

So you know, it was just shy of five minutes between the first and last frames that I shot on this little attempt, a total of 12 frames, which makes it by far the most efficient storm outing yet, even when others have produced better images. I could have thrown a pizza in the oven before I left and been back to take it out on time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a day of severe storm threats, alternating rain and sun, and tornado watches, but after dinner, I heard thunder about the same time that I was getting lightning strike alerts, and checked the Real Time Lightning Map: lots of strikes south of my location, but what looked like increasing activity to the west. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[179,675,2094],"class_list":["post-31739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-lightning-photography","tag-long-exposures","tag-night-exposures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}