Storm over Venice

[Pete Askew]

Taken last night during a thunderstorm over Venice from the hotel balcony. Unfortunately just sheet lightning but it still gave some impressive light.

Leica M9 + Zeiss 18mm Distagon f1:4.0. Camera tripod mounted, ISO 160, 8s at f1:4.0. PP in LR and Nik ColorFX 4 and Viveza.

 

[Hamish Gill]

So is that lit from lightning?!??

 

[Pete Askew]

It is indeed. The frames without lightning are pretty well black apart from the light from the square. I ended up having to use a large aperture to get the exposure right from the square and because the lightning appeared to quite heavily diffused by the clouds and rain.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Oooh yes - I like it. Very much indeed

 

[Pete Askew]

Here's one without a lightning strike - I cropped the lower windows out of the final shot.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Very eerie!

 

[Ahmad Bhai]

Gosh that light is nice

 

[Hamish Gill]

Eh Pete... Where's my picture of a girl in a red coat disapearing around a corner into the darkness?

 

[Dan Cattermole]

Wow! That's a cracker that.
So in effect, the clouds are acting as a HUGE light diffuser, thus giving everything in that frame a 'glow'?

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Wonderful, Pete. That lightning must have cost you a fortune.

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

Stunning Pete, stunning.

 

[Brian Moore]

Lovely shot, Pete. Did you compose and then wait for the few seconds of light to happen?

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Loving that 2nd version Pete!

The light in the first is something else - very erie in fact

The grain works really well to add to the feeling of rain

Beautiful

 

[Pete Askew]

Thanks all. The images were all shot from the balcony of our hotel room and I made a total of 31 exposures each 8 seconds long. The first 6 were shot at f1:8.0 but that gave too little exposure for both the square and the lightning. I caught a lightning strike in 5 of the images and the most interesting was the one above. Most of the lightning was behind and so was diffused by the clouds but some was also up amongst the cloud and I think that is what made this one the best. So really, as usual with lightning, it was a matter of patience. With film I usually just use 'B' and hold the shutter open until something interesting happens (usually limiting to myself to a maximum of 10 seconds).

A lot of the 'grain' is the rain I think although I did layer a monochrome copy using a Neopan simulation in from SilverFX (at 10% transparency) to add some harshness back to the light. Below is a version run through Detail Extractor in ColorFX that shows the texture present in the file better.

And Brian, the cost of the lightning was very reasonable I thought. Only 1 soul!!

 

[Beth Carter]

sweet lighting or lightning.... really great photo.