ABOUT THIS PHOTO The San Diego skyline with the ferry in the foreground. The light rapidly changes right around sunset, and a couple of
minutes can make quite a difference. Taken at 2.5 seconds, f/10, and ISO 100.
8-20STORM LIGHT AND LIGHTNING. Storm lighting and lightning make for stunning
photos. However, photographing lightning is tough for a very simple reason: You never
know where or when it will strike. Some areas of the world get many more lightning storms
than others, and if you do live where there are a lot of storms, then your chances of capturing
this phenomenon increase.
When trying to photograph storms and lightning, absolutely do not put yourself in harms
way trying to get a photo. That said, there are two ways to capture the lightning: Use a tripod,
the Bulb mode, and a cable release to keep the shutter open. In this method, you set the ISO
as low as you can, set the aperture to a small opening like f/11, and start taking photos of the
area where you think the lightning may strike. If the lightning is very close, you may want to
try a smaller aperture, and if it is far away, you may want a bigger aperture. The second
method is to use a trigger device that takes a photo when lightning strikes. This method can
be very useful if it isn’t very dark out and you can’t do long exposures hoping to capture the
lightning randomly. I would still suggest a longer shutter speed to give the rest of the scene
some time to be captured. A device like the Triggertrap (www.triggertrap.com) would be an
example of a triggering device you could use for this.