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A lucky post sunset shot from a few nights ago. (An instantainious acting SLR helps... Pentax K10D) Yet still only one of about 10 tries.
PS looks like that just missed the Navy SEALS over there on Flemming Key... maybe a radio tower of theirs... of course could have been well the other side to in open water... hard to tell.
All taken in Vero Beach, Florida. The last three are from a wild storm that crawled slowly past to the south west, then filled back and pounded us later on. The cloud colors were all over the map, and the lightning shot, such as it is, was blind luck.
The lightning shot taken at 1/30th of a second was fantastic good fortune.
Image stabilization is your friend.
A comical note about that lightning. I pushed the aperture to force a slower shutter speed in hopes of getting a lightning shot, but was shooting in RAW, and my cam will not shoot in Drive mode in RAW format, only jpg. So I was shooting single frames.
Thinking I was missing out on the lightning I switched to jpg, and using drive mode shot over 100 frames while watching lightning bolts drop from the sky within the camera's field of view.
After all that, the first, single RAW shot was the only frame that had a lightning bolt visible in it and I didn't know that until I downloaded the photos later on. It isn't a fantastic lightning shot (there are far better to be found on the Gallery pages here and all over Flickr, for example) but it's what I got that day.
From what I have been told by a gentlemen that does a lot of weather photography. He closes down his aperture a lot then uses an extremely long exposure time.
From what I have been told by a gentlemen that does a lot of weather photography. He closes down his aperture a lot then uses an extremely long exposure time.
Great photos!
I did close down the aperture as much as I could, but it was the middle of the day and I was standing in bright sunlight shooting into the storm, so getting truly long exposures wouldn't have been possible without a filter of some sort. That's why I gave up the single shots and tried to capture lightning with the drive mode turned on, figuring that with all the lightning my eyes were seeing, a hundred exposures ought to catch *something*.
This time a Bigun (top)...I'd guess ~12K ft at least (a 18mm wide angle lens and barely fit it in well over a mile off)... thost littel black balls are the tops of likely 30-40 ft tall palm trees MUCH (like 7-10X+) closer than the cloud.
You do not want to be in that dark grey area to the lower right that is a HUGE down pour pissed out the bottom.... literally like someone continuously dumping buckets of solid water on you. Literally a tip to direct stern water blasting rocket. Much fainter suff to left of center is normal heavy rain.... a faint grey blanket.
And then the bottom of same thunderhead about 20 min and 80 deg more left moved, straight out in front later and a good part of a mile closer, with a little internal lightning and note the out pour has greatly broadened (as well as less dense), and the cloud collapsed/dissipated all together in about another 15 min, largely due to the loss of sun heat keeping it heated and strongly convecting. So wider no longer convecting water just falling out vs the earlier concentrated jet of intense rain with strong circulating convection.... something you definitely go around in a plane.
Top shot almost a cloud rocket... you wouldn't want to be in the middle of that cloud (or the out pour) as serene as it might look.
And just to give some scale of this thing... in second shot the other tall clouds are the typical high hudreds, couple of thousand foot ones, and maybe a bit farther off but this thing was huge... and glad it stayed out THERE and never dumped on me... but seeing that kind of thing coming know when to run (and might warn an ignorant nearby tourist to do so too ) may look pretty but gonna make you VERY soggy in a few min... but this one was going to stay offshore.
PS Just in pic at at extreme far right in top shot is a NOAA remote tide and weather reporting station.
PPS... 3rd shot a day later.... oddly enough no real rain got here... later looking radar showed 3 little green/yellow cells all arond the island, but never got on shore but sure visually looked like biking back in that direction (certainly far side or beyond the far side of 3rd pic) I was likely to get real wet, thankfully weather poroof cam bag ... not just a single cloud a whole marching slew of them! (Actually it did rain some but not til I got to my next destination and not as long or hard as I would have expected)... again mostly off shore... where there was a waterspout/tornado by then, but too dark to catch by then
Also a better look at that NOAA solar powered remote tide and WX station.
It is peak hurricane season.... also peak impressive cloud formation season.
Thanks for the comment.... a potentially scary but also impressively beautiful time of year here.
Late Nov-May mostly all you see is a big orange ball falling in the ocean out of clear blue sky, REAL boring , unless you have never seen the sun hit the water. (I realize many don't) Non obscuring or reflective clouds are what make sunsets interesting.
This being a reflective example (facing away from sunset on one of the FURY cats)... and still WX... had to go in early due to heat lighting turning into bolts... no more skirting anymore this is where we have to get to dock.... even though we get to dock at 8 something we will serve you beer and Margaritas until 8:30 at the dock as promised.... but we are going to get out of the great wide open here NOW for your and our safety, you really don't want to be out here on a giant lightning rod (steel hull and aluminium mast).... much safer at dock right next to a taller building.
And neither you or musicians instruments want to get real wet. (They did have bunches of BIG trash bags for the later eventuality though)... not that night but a couple of nights later was necessary.
What is/defines weather? (Has to be nasty for some to care?
Sometime you just have to wait throuh 20 boring minutes for things to get there
I think in whole lot of ways this does for the beauty that existed between so real threatening dark T-storm on either side.... that might be otherwise scaring you, if not just being on bike VERY wet ecaping shortly after, but somepost ss sun snuck though for a few minutes to do some magic. And several levels of clouds/weather there.
For instance this first one is sideways to sunset that never happened that night but sub horizon crept over the cloudbank to illuninate this. (Most tourist never see... they scatter the moment sun goes below horizon ands never see the well after litteral sunset when something spectacular is most likely to happen like this, and agai when blocked even before sundown not seeing what may come 10 min later.
Can't see the whole panorama of dark and light... but yeah this is weather in the rather narow lull moment of happening.... you just had to seee it coming and wait for it and lasted maybe two min. befor gone to gray again, and again a sort of boring 15 min after literal sunset... but looking at the sky was pretty sure this sort of thing was coming and waited.
Even enough forthought so to haul out the external SLR flash and have it monted, knowing I probably wanted this immediate forground person lit as well, if the silohette was not it (and it wasn't). And flash even lit the front fisher person as well somewhat.
And second shot the same thing.... and actually WELL eveident was going to happen before actual sundown (vs first shot) but the touriststs still split (fine they are out of my way and borred kid not bumping to me or drunken hubby) the second the big red ball fell below the horizon.
By the way what is the technical name for that kind of coloquialy called popcorn clouds, in top of second shot? Hard to tell maybe but distict little mini clouds with blue between them all if looking more straight up.
Those are some beauts! Those are probably Altocumulus clouds. We called that a mackerel sky.
Yeah as they are spotted fish that imagery would fit too. .. but can often look like sky born popcorn kernals.... and when clear enough sky near (or even clear just below) horizon, will more often than not look like this though shades can vary from bright amber to very deep magenta.... this one sort of in the middle.
And again that they aren't around bumping into me, a good thing.... so many toristS leave the SECOND the BIG RED ball subsides the horizon... yet you kow what you are seeing.... knew (and even physical signs of it) developing THIS WAS LIKELY COMING you wait another 5-10 min. And then them bitching such a so so sunset... your fault not mine And yet even WELLL before sundown, I could see it starting and had no doubt it WOULD happen if not a solid cloud bank below the horizon.
Well, we're in our annual vacation at Holden Beach, a lovely place with wonderful people. We don't experience the tension and mutual dislike between tourists and residents that you indicate exists at Key West, thank heavens. We're more like neighbors and guests here. I'd hate to vacation in a place with such stress, no matter how physically beautiful.
Back on topic, I agree there are undiscovered beauties in the hours before sunrise and after sunset. We (wife and I) prefer to go out and watch the sunset here, and the light is spectacular for the several minutes after the sun has gone below the horizon. As several of the previously posted pictures show, it doesn't have to be nasty out for weather to be beautiful. cloud formations, ocean and mountain sunrise/sunsets, fronts over the plains, even to pollution sunsets of the LA area have their own beuty(although one might put that in the "nasty" category!
The second picture was taken several minutes after sunset, almost dark, at ISO100, 1.3 seconds, F3.2. It was noisy and I neat imaged it in a not-too-great hurry-up job.
) may look pretty but gonna make you VERY soggy in a few min... but this one was going to stay offshore.
, unless you have never seen the sun hit the water. (I realize many don't) Non obscuring or reflective clouds are what make sunsets interesting.
