Thunderstorm and Stars
After seeing the beautiful rainbow and then going out to take pictures of the receding storm over the ocean, I figured that was all the pictures I’d take for the day. I did go next door to snap a few pictures of my aunt and uncle and their family, a group of 18. As I came out from that, I was greeted with a beautiful sight. Even this photograph, which I think it pretty amazing, doesn’t capture the real beauty. The sky would be dark. Then, lightning in the clouds out to sea would light them up, sometimes just providing light to the clouds, other times accompanied by streaks of lightning between the clouds and the sea or horizontally between clouds. I set up my camera on a tripod and took a bunch of exposures at various settings. This one was ISO 800, f/3.5, 30 seconds. On the beach, you can see a family with flashlights walking from right to left. Then, the clouds, lit by multiple flashes of lightning. Above the clouds, stars.
Long exposures on a digital camera produces a lot of “noise.” The black areas of the picture were not black, but a mottled collection of colored blobs, small but of varying size. This is a time when a full-frame sensor makes a big difference, because they produce significantly less noise. Still, with the aid of a noise filter on my processing software, I’ve turned this into something usable. I’m pretty chuffed about this picture, to be honest.
