Thursday, April 22, 2010

One Mississi…Holy $#!%

Taking pictures of lightning is harder than you think.

The gods were bumper-bowling the other night, just hurling shots one after the other without waiting for the rack thing to come down and reset the pins up in the mountains. Must have been dollar beer night. I mean, it was something to behold. Whole valley lit up. Great big zig-zag bolts. My dog peed her pants. Actually they were my pants, I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing wearing my stuff.

So I thought if I’m ever going to get a lightning bolt picture, it’s now. Set the tripod up and took several million frames but the closest I got was this sort of whitishly lit-up sky photo. Really, there was an impressive bolt right there, just a second before.

On a sidenote: trying to hold a phone conversation when someone’s trying to take pictures of lightning is a bad time. Here’s a transcript:


“Hey, how’s it…O my god…

Sorry. There’s a lightning storm going on and…whoooooooaaaahhhhhh……

What’ve you been up to?…juh-eeezeeus…did you hear that? Man.

Yeah, I’m trying to….seriously, this is….you should….”


And then more of that, until your friend kindly suggests they should let you go.