Epic Anniversary Storm

Well my wife and I went in to have dinner at the beach for our 23rd wedding anniversary yesterday evening.   We were sitting peacefully at Nightcliff watching the sunset when I heard some angry distant rumbling behind us...  alas the mother of all storms was advancing from the east!

Well we ducked into town to Fisherman's Wharf to get a better view and it really was an awesome sight.  The bureau sent out a Severe Thunderstorm Warning as it had some pretty wild winds and lightning associated with it.

Pity about the rain on the lens for this one!

Storm season is kicking in!

Got up at 2.30am this morning when I heard some distant thunder and headed into Nightcliff.  Got some keepers as a little storm went by just off the coast.

Bayview Strike

Got my best close-up lightning capture just before dawn this morning.  Was awoken by thunder at around 5am and saw on the radar that it would be a home in Palmerston within 10 minutes or so.  I decided to try and get ahead of it a bit and rushed into town and ended up at Fishermens Wharf. 

Got a few ok shots as it came in but nothing really good.  I had horizontal drizzle straight at me wetting the lens and decided to pack up.  I was just driving out when I noticed the rain eased a bit and a big bolt landed to the north of me.  I grabbed the tripod out again, didn't even extend the legs and setup as quick as I could and got this one good bolt before the really heavy rain chased me back into the car.  I could put the camera side-on to the wind for this shot so water drops on the lens wasn't such an issue.

Wound the aperture all the way to F18 as I knew it would be very bright - and the exposure was perfect.  Luckily it was as I was somehow accidentally in jpeg mode and not RAW as I normally am - forgot to check that as I rarely change that setting!

At F18 it sure highlighted all the dust spots on my sensor with the big depth of field - so I had to clean up the image somewhat - also added a bit of contrast.  This shot is not cropped except for a bit of tilt to fix a slightly crooked horizon.

East Point sunset

Plenty of storm weather yesterday afternoon but not much lightning that I could find.  The sunset ended up being very grey but I was able to nab this little window that appeared for a few minutes.  This was taken at 120mm.

East Arm Bolt

Just got this down at East Arm...  was the only bolt I saw and was about to pack up when it sprung out in front of me.  *Yawn* time for bed!

East Point Crawler

Took this in the early hours of Saturday morning from the Museum boat ramp.  I missed a few as a lot of drizzle fell at the back end of the storm as it went over the water and it was too wet to try and take photos outside the car.

Lightning Arch

Lightning Arch over Darwin Waterfront

Been a bit slack lately folks and even this one was an unplanned shot.  My wife and I went to our son Daniel's year 12 graduation at the Convention Centre and saw this on the way when we were leaving for the car.  I didn't have my camera with me but had borrowed my sister's camera (as I only have wide angle lenses not suitable for taking pics at a party).  Lucky I had the tripod in the car and I got a dozen or so shots of some nice lightning.  This was a 30 second exposure at around F8 I think - at ISO100.

More buildup storms

Went for a drive this afternoon - saw a promising beauty building up around Acacia but it faded.  I ended up at Channel Island where a nice storm came up just on sunset and lit up beautifully.  I did get a few shots of bolts coming out of it but no real good ones...  so these are the ones I liked but with no lightning...  I still haven't got a good sunset lightning shot!

My First Storm image of the season

Ok folks this one is a bit different... basically I wasn't happy with the photo so I tried something different with it to hopefully still produce a nice image... I say image as you couldn't declare it as a photo anymore - even if it did originate from one.

I've given it a painted effect so it hopefully looks like its been painted by hand...  let me know if you still think it works as a nice image. 

The photo was taken from the Marrakai track near the Stuart Highway looking south this evening.