Mo' weather!

So last night there was a threatening thunder storm, which for the Eastern Cape is not that common. My last attempt (many years ago..... shudup!) at shooting lightening resulted in a lengthy string of hazy grey slides. Not surprising since I had no cable release and no tripod! My how we have blossomed :)

So I shimmied up a hill and took a few exposures, this time opting for the use of a cable release and tripod. Whilst experimental, this was probably the best result. I opted to shoot wide as the storm was moving quite quickly and looked like it had a fairly long head. I noticed there was a tendancy for horizontal flashes in one area and vertical in another so set up with the intention of capturing both. It was some distance away so I knew that I would be going panoramic, cropping blackness out the top of the frame. Sadly this is roughly a 50% crop so would be great for postage stamps, perhaps a community newspaper somewhere ;) or perhaps a website or two.

Notice the needles of light to the right of the frame. Not sure why they rendered like that instead of the usual 'star' or periferal glow.

Specs: f/8 at 2mins.

Post Processing: temperature adjustment to bring in the blues. Added a little contrast.

Paul.

Working with E's weather

Having commented on E's pic being a cracker I decided to dabble. (Sorry E!)

I loved the complexity and colours in the posted image and 'surreal' was the adjective that immediately sprung to mind. So... flying with this I decided to see if I could bring it out a bit. I still love the colours and 'surreal' is still my adjective.

I HDR'd two images, the original and the original +1 stop. Brought in the greys a teeny bit using curves and warmed it up a little by selecting the yellows in a hue and saturation layer. And that was pretty much it. Took about 5 mins.

Downsides? There is some blow out at the lightening and of course the noise becomes more noticeable. I think it now has a different feel to the original, but the core elements are fore fronted. Couldn't do anything about the text at the top I am afraid ;-)

Be interested to see what everyone thinks (unless it is some drivel about art/authenticity/ 'real' or some such claustrophobic commentary - yawn!) ;-)

Paul.

Drakensberg weather

Admittedly I'm cheating a little here and the shot wasn't taken in the last month. I could say it was discovered in the last week though as i completely forgot about taking it. This is from a receding storm as seen from Witsieshoek while on a photography workshop in the Drakensberg last October.

tech: Iso 200, f5.6 for 6 and 1/2 minutes.

Whether or not...

Sorry bout the title but someone had to... .

At first I thought this was gonna be (yet!) another non contributing month for me, but then I was phoned by Business Report at lunchtime asking for an image of any dry river beds in the Eastern Cape due to the drought. So once I got looking ('cause I didn't much feel like whipping out to the Kariega and trying to get something to them by 4pm!) I found some stuff of the storms river and then I remembered that I had taken this on New Year's day. (It rained! And there was a full moon! Or would have been if the clouds weren't a gazillion gallactic kilometers deep!)

So I figured I would post this, knowing that it is pushing the brief ('s no snow I am afraid!) I have been wanting to try a few panoramics for a while and especially some vertical ones. So here is a first attempt. It is a merge of two images taken at f16 at 1/4 sec and at 38mm focal length (non full frame-sigh!). I don't know whether or not it works (for weather or not). Personally I would have liked more mud and more foreground, but I like the conflict between drizzly clouds, wet weeds and cracked mud. Let us know your thoughts (well, the ones pertaining to this blog anyway..!)

And one day soon I will post a comment on Neil's documentary stuff. There was so much bowing and passing (you can get up now ;) how can I not?
Paul.

January's Theme - WEATHER

Greetings for the new year all!

I thought that since everyone is either reveling in or moaning about the weather at the moment it would make a good theme for this month. So grab a pic of the snow (Mandy - check), brave the rain (anyone in KZN) or simply photograph meteorological chart. Have fun...but do be careful about your camera getting wet. I theoretically wasn't and am sans favourite image making machine at the moment as my precious camera lies gutted and under the surgeon's knife in Joburg. Sigh.

I trust 2010 will be wonderful for us all. Get out there and get shooting

E