View from Lyle R. Fish Point – perhaps there will be a #storm with lots of #lightning

Today we went on a family trip to the Wolf Park, near Battle Ground, Indiana to let the kids howl with the wolves.  Unfortunately, we could not make it to the Watermelon Party but instead we decided to attend a Howl Night.

The Wolf Park is a great place to take the kids; they can have fun and learn about nature and the wolves. Here is a great article about the Wolf Park from the Columbia Daily Tribune.

Just as the Howl Night was beginning thunder started to roll in and a nice summer storm was forming. Luckily, I brought my Sigma DP1 but I did not bring any kind of tripod. Fortunately I found a  4×4 fence post that I could re-purpose as a tripod.

To make sure to get sharp photos I set the Sigma DP1 to Self Timer to 2 Seconds which should be plenty of time to press the shutter and let go of the camera once it is propped up.

Setting the bracketing mode to “Auto Bracketing +- 0.3″ is also helpful since you only have to press the shutter every 3rd exposure (which is nice once you are in the 15 second exposure territory).  The only painful thing is having to watch the lightning when the DP1 is writing the files – It feels like eternity. The difference in exposure of 0.3 EV up or down can easily be corrected in post processing – no big deal.

As you can see lightning shots at daylight are possible without a lightning trigger. You just have to take a hell of a lot of exposures to catch one… ISO 50 at F/11 will give you about a 2 second window.

Next time I will make sure to remember to bring a ND filter to slow things down while the sun is still above the horizon…

I have to say, that in this particular case I really like the feel of ISO 50 at F/11 processed in Sigma Photo Pro 4.1. ISO 50 may cause to loose some highlight details, however ISO 50 gives the image great tonalities and the Foveon 3D Look.

Battle Ground, Indiana is about 50 miles NW of where we are staying and just as Howl Night ended the Thunderstorm unleashed and followed us home to Zionsville.  On the way home, of course, we had to stop for a potty break and I found an opportunity to take another shot, this time I rested the Sigma DP1 on a big electrical box and used the key chain of the rental car to prop the camera up to get a little more upward angle. At this point I dialed the ISO up to 100.

Finally, as I was starting to write this post, the storm caught up with us again and I had to take a break to step outside to take a couple of shots. This time the neighbors mailbox made due as a tripod…

I was all worried about missing out on some monsoon storms at home in Arizona, however Photo-Fortuna and the Wolves have been very nice to me.

Now that I caught a little dose of “Storm Chasing” I cannot wait to get back for the Arizona Monsoon Season.

I processed these images on my 6 year old Toshiba Portege with Sigma PhotoPro 4.1 and have no clue how the colors will come out on your end.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that you should check out the Flickr Wolf Park, Battle Ground, Indiana Group.

Originally I used this image for testing purposes while I was tweaking the design of my blog a little bit but after looking at it I just decided to leave it up… This image was captured September 4th, 2009 west of Buckeye, Arizona somewhere along the I-10 freeway.

Checking on Southwest Lightning confirmed that it was worthwhile to venture out and try to get some shots. Not wanting to go too far I decided to head north on the Loop 101 and found a spot to shoot from just north of the 101 on Hayden Rd. After getting situated with my tripod and camera I started to click away.While I was concentrating on framing a shot and making sure that I was focused I heard a car pull up near to where I was parked and sure enough there was a guy getting out of his car with a tripod and a camera bag.

There was no way to ignore each other, especially considering the fact that we both spotted each other’s Nikon gear from the distance. We quickly exchanged “hello” and it turns out that this  Nikon shooter is a fellow European, from former Yugoslavia. Ivan told me that he just recently got into photography and picked up a Nikon D40 but is already looking to upgrade to a D90 very soon.

Ivan set up right next to me and started to click along. How cool is it to keep meeting other photographers out in the desert during monsoon? Funny how small the world becomes when there is good storm brewing in the Arizona desert. Not too long ago, we ran into Tony Laubach of Tornados Kick during a Monsoon Storm, August 23rd 2009 at the I-10 and Ave 75 E Exit, east of Quartzsite, Arizona.

I am just surprised that I haven’t run into other local Flickr storm chasers yet…

I captured this image on August 23rd, 2009 just east of Quartzsite, Arizona near I-10 and Ave 75 E.

That evening there was hardly any cloud to ground lightning at this position despite the size of that storm cell, but the drama unfolding in the sky was just spectacular. “Highway to Hell” was the first thing which came to my mind when I saw the image on my screen…

This image was taken in Fountain Hills, Arizona near the Fountain looking towards Saguaro Blvd. August 21st 2009 was a beautiful day to chase Monsoon Storms in the Valley of the Sun. There were storm cells in every corner of the valley.

A capture of Monsoon Storm over Phoenix, Arizona

This image was captured July 20th, 2009 from the look-out at South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona. Chasing after Monsoon Storms all over Arizona and photographing mother nature unleashing its power is one of my favorite things to do.