Catching a Moment in Time

I recently attended a photography workshop in Death Valley lead by Scott Stulberg http://asa100.com and Jennifer Wu http://jenniferwu.com/.

On Saturday evening,  just before we were going to head out to Rhyolite, a ghost town near the Nevada border, a thunderstorm rolled in.  Of course being photographers we saw lots of photo opportunities, one of them capturing lightning, not exactly an easy thing to do.  You never know when it is going to occur where it will be in the sky.  We all ran off to our rooms to grab our cameras and tripods and set up in a line outside our rooms.  I’m sure the other guests thought we wacky, but we were excited and having a good time.

I shoot with a Nikon and I used the following exposure settings in manual mode; ISO200, 15 second shutter speed at f9.  I also used auto white balance.  I set up the intervalometer on the camera to pause for 2 seconds between shots.  If you have a Canon or another brand, you may need to use a remote shutter release/intervalometer.  I got lucky!  I captured a wonderful lightning bolt, even the framing was perfect.

Thanks for reading! – Jim

Filed in: Travel
Tagged with: Workshops