I love a good storm, crackling thunder and exploding lightning. Although it’s not very fun playing with metal rods in the middle of a lightning storm, they sure make for some awesome photos!

The day started off perfect, with 80 degree weather and sunshine. I even took a hike in the mountains for some photos. But later, the sky grew dark and I could see lightning start to drop from the sky off in the distance. What a great chance to try some lightning photography!

I’ve tried photographing the electrically charged bolts before, but with little success. That was mainly due to the lack of proper equipment. But this time I was prepared.

There isn’t much you need in order to get some great lightning shots; tripod, shutter release, and a camera. That’s all I used. Oh, and it helps to have some patience as well!

I set my ISO to 200 to let a little more light in but not too much. The aperture was set to 22 to get as much in focus as possible, and I used manual focus at infinity. Your camera doesn’t like to auto focus in the dark!

I set up in the bathroom upstairs because the window in there has the best view. I double checked all my settings, set up the camera, and shut off the lights. Now it was just a waiting game.

Another setting I failed to mention earlier is the “Bulb” setting. This allows you to hold the shutter open as long as you need, thus the need for a shutter release. For these long exposures you don’t want to touch your camera to avoid any vibration or movement.

I then would press the shutter, wait a few seconds, and release. Sometimes I didn’t get anything, and other times I did. It’s really hit and miss with lightning. You can’t wait until you see the lightning before you hit the shutter. By the time you do, the lightning is long gone. So pressing the shutter until the lightning strikes and then releasing the shutter will guarantee you get something.

Another option would be to buy an adapter specifically for lightning photography. It mounts to the hot-shoe and is triggered when it senses light. I would like to get one some day, but they are quite expensive.

Here are the best shots, out of about 50. Please enjoy!

This is a compilation of some of the above images. Although it’s a “fake” it makes for one spectacular image!

Thanks for reading!

The weather here in Wyoming has been dreadful!  I don’t mind a little rain now and then to green things up, but this is ridiculous!!  Today was no different, with showers scheduled the sky was dark most of the day.

I was supposed to be downtown at 5pm to get some footage for a new commercial advertising the Sheridan Street Fair, which will be the third Thursday every month until September.  Then I had to be at the softball fields at 7:40 for the first of two games tonight.  Well, as luck would have it, the games were canceled and I was able to stay at the fair a lot longer than planned.

This allowed me to get the footage I needed, plus some extra photos for myself.  If you live in the Sheridan area, you need to try and get down to the next one, which I believe is going to be July 16.  There is live music, food and beverages, and plenty of booths to browse through.  (Don’t forget to get your own custom temporary tattoo!)  I’m actually thinking of setting up my own booth to do a little advertising as well.

So anyway, here are some of the best shots from tonight.  Please enjoy!

Nice little face painting!

This guy was pretty funny. I had no idea Sheridan had 82 religious groups!

These guys were pretty good, considering they are only young teenagers! (Like 14 or 15 young!)

They closed Main Street for about 5 blocks for the fair.

Even the Drum & Bugle Corps made an appearance. And almost made my ears bleed!

I really liked this band, and this image!

Here they are again, huddled around the mic like they’re trying to keep warm!

The violin player was pretty sweet, too!

Finger-plucking good!

And this is a Burmese Mountain Dog, which happens to be my wife’s favorite. Beautiful dogs.

(On a side note…is it “Burmese or Burnese? I found both spellings while searching the net. I think it’s Burmese, with an “m”.)

This week’s episode is all about fun!  We’ve totally redone the format so it’s much easier to watch. In this week’s show we talk about the Anomaly Farm, Discover America, Simplify Media, Homer TomTom, Film Riot, Stick Wars (iPod App). So sit back, relax, and click Play!!

Living 15 minutes from the Big Horn Mountains is awesome. I can take a short drive and be surrounded by pine trees, breath fresh air, and have infinite possibilities for great photos.

A friend of mine called this morning wanting to know if I wanted to go up the canyon for some whitewater rafting.  Do I?  Of course!  I loaded my gear and in less than 30 minutes I was at the site ready to take some great photos.

I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I did taking them!  They were all processed in Lightroom 2 with various presets.

Topics covered: picturesocial.com, Palm Pre, iPhone GS, Windows 7, and Apple OS 10.6

Editing photos can be a time consuming project, especially if you have hundreds of photos to go through.  So anytime there is a shortcut to the process, it’s a blessing.

I found one of these shortcuts the other day while working on some photos.  It deals with advancing photos while in the Library Module.

So I made a quick little video to demonstrate how this is done.  Enjoy!

Today, my photo class took a photowalk downtown.  It’s the first time I’ve ever gone out with other photographers to take pictures.  I usually enjoy going out by myself, for a little “me time”, but I can honestly say that it was great having other photogs there.

I’m usually a loner when it comes to photowalks, and enjoy the quiet to be able to focus and get lost in my thoughts.  However, going out on one’s own can have its drawbacks as well.  Having a group there allowed me to get their point of view on different shots.  We were all able to feed off each other and bounce ideas around.

And even though we were taking pictures of the same things, none of us ever had the same result.  Ah, the beauty of creative minds!

So if you ever find yourself short on ideas, just go out with a few other photographers and you’ll be able to spark your creativity once again.  I’ve chosen a few of my favorite images from the photowalk and would like to share them with you.

“Bank of Commerce – 1894

Conflicting Lines

Bleeding Windows

Josh

Pav

The Men’s Shop

Blue Gate

One Shot

Thanks for reading!!

Welcome to Part 2 of “How to Take Smoke Photographs”!

If you haven’t read Part 1, I suggest starting there.  I show you how to set up your equipment to take smoke photos.

Then follow along with this video tutorial, where I show you how to edit your photos.  The process is pretty simple and is limited only by your imagination.

Thank you for watching!  Please leave your comments!

I recently became fascinated with smoke photography.  The images that result from the random patterns of smoke are quite amazing and mezmorizing.

The images look difficult to create, with multiple colors and patterns, but it’s actually quite simple.

In this post today I’m going to show you exactly how to do it, from start to finish.  Enjoy!

First, let’s go over the equipment you’re going to need in order to take smoke photos.

Equipment

1. Smoke – The best smoke is from incense.  It lasts a long time, has a nice steady stream, and smells good!
2. Backdrop – I’ve found that using a black backdrop is the best when taking the photos.  You can use black posterboard, matboard, or a black sheet.
3. Light – As with any type of photography, light is key.  I tried a couple different setups and found that using one modeling lamp off to the side did the best for me.
4. Tripod – Placing your camera on a tripod is crucial to getting tack-sharp images.
5. Camera – This is self-explanatory!  However, I haven’t tried using a point-and-shoot camera for this.  You’ll want a camera that allows you to have full manual control.
6. Remote Shutter Release – This isn’t necessary, but it helps.

Now that we have our equipment, let me show you how I set it up.

Pretty simple setup.  I have a black sheet as the backdrop that’s pinned to the wall and draped over the bed.  The one modeling strobe is set up on the left fairly close to the smoke.  And the tripod is set up in front.

Here is a closeup of the incense sitting on top of a box.  Since I’m aiming for just the smoke, I don’t have to worry about covering the box.

Settings Used

Now that we have everything setup, you may be wondering what settings to use on your camera.  This is what I used:

• ISO – 100
• Shutter Speed – 1/250
• Aperture – f/5.6  (I also used f/11 to get more in focus)
• Focus – Manual (Focus on the incense stick in automatic mode, then switch to manual and leave it alone.)

You may need to play around with the settings to get the effect you’re looking for.  I started with f/5.6 and then moved to f/11 when I noticed that some of the smoke was out of focus.  I left all the other settings the same and it seemed to work well.

I first tried using a snoot on the strobe to pinpoint the light where I wanted it, but it wasn’t giving me enough light.  The strobe was set to 1/4 power, so I might have been able to increase the power with the snoot attached.  (That’s for another day!)

I took the snoot off and shot with the strobe at 1/4 power still.  I had to move the strobe a little farther from the backdrop and angle it a little more because it was hitting part of the backdrop.  You don’t want any light falling on the backdrop to keep it as dark as possible.  This will help later in post-processing.

Now that everything is setup and your camera is ready, it’s time to take some photos!

I just sat there watching the smoke, waiting to capture the cool designs rising up from the incense stick.  Sometimes I missed, sometimes I got it.

What I did notice, however, was that the strobe was actually disturbing the smoke some.  Since it was so close to the smoke, every time it fired I could see the smoke move.  This was never really a problem, and probably gave me more designs to shoot at.

You may have noticed that I never said that I shot in total darkness.  Some people will say this is important, to be able to concentrate the light on the smoke.  However, I found that leaving the overhead light on did absolutely nothing to the photos.  Since the strobe was so powerful and I was shooting into the black background at a decent shutter speed, there was no problem leaving the light on.  It actually helped me be able to see the smoke!

The most important thing to remember is that you’re not going to take 50 shots and have 50 usable shots.  To give you an idea of how “hit and miss” this can be, I took 260 shots and kept only 37.  That’s only 14% that were somewhat usable!  And I probably won’t use all of those either.

So be patient and have fun!

SIDENOTE: I thought about doing this all in one post, but I’m going to split it up and go over the post-processing in the next post.

Thanks for reading, and leave comments if you’d like!

Continue on to Part 2 where I show you how to edit your smoke photos!