Lightning experiments

It was happening again yesterday. Heavenly flares and flashes were lighting up the backdrop behind that hillock and the immediate neighbourhood. Akshay came running to me, bursting with excitement at the spurts of illumination which were creating magnificent, isolated silhouettes of the hillock, the clouds and the tall receiver station, in an otherwise dark sky. As I broke into a beaming smile and let go a rapturous 'tokk', I realised that despite seeing this almost every other day here, at Talegaon, it still evoked a wonderous feeling. Far away, beyond the hillock and the mountain lines perhaps, a possessed clan of clouds and the crazy earth must be playing with their charges!

I have never seen before lightning with such regularity as I have seen in Talegaon. The location of this place between mountains on many sides and more importantly the vastness of perceptible space seem to make this possible. Unlike a metropolitan, where visibility is limited by structures and their immense density, this place is not that badly cluttered and not so populated as yet. Hence our terrace affords a lavish view across the countryside right until the horizon which in this case is largely undulated by mountainous hunches. And not just on one side, but in almost all the directions. The feeling, when I spend evenings sitting on the water tank at the top of my building, is akin to those I have had on numerous treks; a view spanning the earth as much as it could!  When I lift may gaze slightly skyward I see myriad and plenty clouds and realize their movements. Sample this – In cities, either there are clouds or there are no clouds; either it thunders and throws lightning or doesn't; it either rains or it doesn't. But here, I can see dense clouds, not here, but a few kilometers away over that mountain; I can sense the rains to my right and sunshine in front of me; I can sit down here without fear and still watch in awe furious lightning striking somewhere in a distance! I can sense nature at work in its various forms at different places at the same time, as if it were running numerous parallel processes, all of them distinctly visible to me.
 

Somewhere along this experience I thought I should try to capture images of lightning. There are, anyway, many spectacular images of this phenomenon already available across web and other literature, and still I wanted to experiment with my camera. Although this was a long cherished idea, I thought I had good chances of getting a good result here. I started with the first noticeable rains of this monsoon and have made a few attempts since. With a digital camera like mine, it is pretty simple. Trying to click at precisely that moment when lightning strikes is obviously not a very wise option. One might instead think of utilizing the features in a good enough camera. All you need is a fairly prolonged shutter speed (which means keeping the shutter open for atleast a few seconds) and loads of patience. Based on the other conditions, one may have to adjust other settings in the camera, like keeping the aperture small when exposing for a long time to reduce the insurge from other areas in the frame. With a long exposure, a steady surface for the camera is advisable while capturing the image. The lightning, if it strikes in exactly that window of time when shutter's open, is bright enough to create a reasonable impression, as also to leave the rest of the frame fairly illuminated. The settings may have to be adjusted bearing these things in mind. Patience is a very important trait in this pursuit and that can convert the matter of luck to a matter of time, before you get your desired result.
 

A few days ago, I felt, I finally got a satisfactory image. Hence this post :P
 

I would like to share some of the images of lightning that I have captured till now. Apart from scaling the images, I have worked around, slightly, with these images in GIMP, mainly modifying the picture curve to reduce unwanted illumination from lightning, of adjoining areas. (But believe me, the pictures look equally good with that illumination) 

The first one was captured on June 11, 2010. This one struck right behind the Harneshwar tekdi and I captured it from my balcony. Since it was pitch dark, the camera couldn't focus well enough.
 

The second one was taken on September 28, 2010. This lightning was snapped over the trademark mountain near Talegaon, around which Indrayani meanders. This lightning seems to be a cloud­-cloud discharge. I captured this from my terrace.

 The third one was photographed on November 21, 2010. This one's similar to the second in location. However I got really lucky with (wonder of wonders!) three lightning strikes in the captured frame. I was literally jumping with joy and singing merrily for the rest of the day!
 

Here's some of the exif data for this image if anyone's interested.
Exposure Time: 13 sec.
ISO Speed Rating: 200
Flash Fired: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode.
Metering Mode: Center­Weighted Average
Exposure Program: Manual
Focal Length: 9.9 mm
 

One interesting capture in this above image is the region in the vicinity of the mountain surface and the tail of the rightmost lightning. The air in that region seems to have been blown away or vastly influenced by the lightning strike. I wonder what the effect actually is! (Maybe related to streamers...or...impact..or..anyway) Here's that zoomed part.
 

Lalit had written a very interesting and informative post on lightning and related observations in his blog some time ago. Here's the link for that article.

- Vindy :)