First attempt at shooting lightning

We had a great lightning storm last night. Here is one of the shots I got. Thoughts?

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/om1a​bp

I like it but wish I could see what the bolts on the left side are striking.

I agree with the above. Fantastic mood. If only the ground or horizon was visible on the left it would be spectacular! But excellent results for your first attempt!

A hard task as you learned. I'd love to see the ground/horizon. Good job!

From my experience when taking lightning pictures, its less exciting to see what the lightning is actually striking because its usually mundane. I think you did right by only showing the bolts and left the rest up to the imagination.

I say this from experience. I shot some lighting recently and ended up with a result that I wasn't chasing that actually turned out to be pretty boring. The extra stuff at the bottom really takes away from the lightning. Next time, I'll point higher up like you did.

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Thanks you for the comments. There is more to this photo, but I cropped a lot of it out. As bjonesy77 said, where the lightning was striking wasn't very interesting so I decided to crop it out. Plus it was all very distracting stuff. Car light trails, stop lights etc. Even though there isn't really anything interesting in the shot other than the lightning I still feel the set came out much better than anticipated. I'll post a few more when I get home from work.

I really like both pictures a lot

Too mcuh sky IMO. I would crop out some of the top and make into a pano crop. Would make a pretty cool Facebook cover photo.

rivas8409 wrote in post #17053841
Too mcuh sky IMO. I would crop out some of the top and make into a pano crop. Would make a pretty cool Facebook cover photo.

agreed

I don't mind the extra sky in the OP's pic, I feel it gives it mood. However without the area that it strikes the photo looks like it was cut in half. I would give a small glimpse of the bottom and that's it.

here is mine cropped

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I appreciate the comments and suggestions. The reason I cropped the bottom out was because I didn't pick the best location. There were car light trails and street lights that I felt were distracting from the lightning.

IMO, half the work involved in shooting lightning is finding locations to shoot from that DO have clean, attractive, or interesting horizons. Scout locations beforehand and head to the best one when a storm roll into town.

Oh of course. I completely agree with you Geonerd. This was my first time even attempting to shoot lightning so I wasn't too concerned with what else was or was not in the shot. Unfortunately the lightning itself came out great haha.. I was just messing with setting and how long to keep the shutter open. Next time I will definitely plan ahead and make sure everything in the shot looks nice with or without lightning.