Quick Storm Chasing

So I'm back in Athens. The road was long and hard. The hotel room life is not for me, not at 15 days at a stretch. CWS was a lot of fun but its good to be home.

Yesterday I'm just relaxing on a Sunday when i hear about storms in the area. I check the weather radar, grab the camera and tripod and went to the top of the tallest parking garage in town and looked west.

Now Daytime lightning requires a bunch of things. LUCK, good planning, and a ND filter of some sort. Since i don't have a big ND filter, I used a polarizer which is effectively a 2 stop ND filter. Just used a shutter release, tripod, f/22 and aperture priority. I basically just watched where the cells were that the lightning was striking from, put them in the frame, composed a 1/2 decent shot motor drived it on a 4 gig card, hoping that i'd get what i want. Average exposure was about 4 seconds.

IMPORTANT - You need to take personal safety into account. If you can see lightning and hear thunder, there is a chance it can hit you. Especially if you have a giant metal tripod and are the tallest thing around, say on the top of a seven-story tall parking garage. You have to be very aware of what is going on around you and how fast the storm is coming. If the storm has already hit, i recommend the 2nd level from the top of a parking garage. Also you don't get wet that way.

There is a product out there called a lightning trigger which makes catching the pretty lightning much easier. I have seen it in person, used by storm chaser and action news photographer Gene Blevins and i would highly recommend purchasing said tool if you are really into this. (Like I am)