A Thunderstorm in Salt Lake City

Thunderstorms are probably one of my favorite things in the world, even if I do get anxious at the thought of being electrocuted to death by lightning.
Last night, one of the best lightning shows I’ve ever seen in Salt Lake performed in southern Salt Lake/northern Utah counties.
Bored with nothing to do on a Saturday night, Kyle, Chloe, Camera, and I headed south to get front-row seats.

They (they meaning I) say photographing lightning requires just as much patience as fishing. I had set my camera up for high-speed continuous exposure, at first for 10″, then for 6″, then for 3.2″, then for 2.5″. Since longer-exposed photos take longer to process than well-lit ones, each photo’s processing time took about the same time as it did to expose for the photo in the first place. For a 10-second exposure, I was waiting another 10 seconds to be able to expose again. The flashing “busy” indication in the viewfinder was almost as annoying as the continuous beeping your car makes when you don’t put your seat belt on. My 50/50 chance of capturing lightning played against me, for lightning seemed to only strike when my photos were processing. Grr.

Nonetheless, I did manage to capture some great shots, but not without the virtue of patience. In total, we spent about two hours at the Point of the Mountain, changing position/location every-so-often. Yet, I only got three “better” shots. Here they are:

Aug 28, 2011, 12:02 am.

Aug 28, 2011, 12:11 am.

Aug 27, 2011, 11:35 pm. Boom! How would you like to be struck by that bad boy?

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• lightning
• nature
• photography
• photos
• salt lake city
• storm
• thunderstorm
• utah