Look! Up In The Sky!

"sonicgabe" (gabeloewenberg)
06/02/2016 at 16:47 • Filed to: OppoPhoto

On Monday, I posted a picture of a lightning strike with Mars hanging out up in the sky.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

It was a cool shot, but this was the money shot from the night.

I was shooting with the camera on burst and locked it down with the shutter release cable. I was cycling through different f-stop, ISO, and exposure times set-ups. Eventually, I took 21 successive 10 second exposures with the camera set at ISO 250, f/4, 18mm; total exposure time 210 seconds (3.5 minutes for those, like me, who aren’t friends with math and need a little help).

Captured in 10 of the 21 pictures is a large passenger plane, or really the lights of the plane, that took off from Tampa International Airport and was flying south over Tampa Bay. As the camera was shooting, I watched the plane turn west to fly over St Petersburg for it’s accent. Once it made it’s westward turn, I realized it was still fairly low and would be flying directly over my head. I let the camera fire away, hoping that I got it .

I got it.

I was also hoping for a good external lightning bolt from the cloud. Nope. The few that did go off only illuminated the cloud from from within, which still came out pretty nice.

To put it all together, I complied two full stacks of the 10 shots but processed each separately; one for deep blacks, the other for mids and highlights. Next, I layered those and adjusted to opacity of the mids and highlights image for a natural looking blend. I fine-tuned the final image several different ways to compare results and ended up with this picture.

Oh, do you see those wavesque lights on the water in the foreground? That was a wakeboarder paddling by with some LED lights on his board and gear. And if you look carefully, you can seen the faint light trails of a few other planes far off on the distance. I’m pretty happy with the result. I couldn’t have planned this shot if I tried.

Total time spent processing this one picture was about fours hours. Totally worth it. Next time, I’ll try to take a picture of a car.

DISCUSSION (4)

deekster_caddy > sonicgabe
06/02/2016 at 16:55

Pretty cool picture. I wonder if you can submit it to a contest or art show or something.

BReLp7dzHM3ytYsE > sonicgabe
06/02/2016 at 17:24

This is awesome. Just shared to photography.kinja.com

Racin'Jason001 > sonicgabe
06/02/2016 at 17:35

Seems Close Encounters of the Third Kind esque.

sonicgabe > BReLp7dzHM3ytYsE
06/02/2016 at 17:58

Thanks! I need to hang out a little more over there.