Storms and Lightning

There seemed to be a storm approaching on April 26, 2015, so I started taking pictures out an upstairs window of lightning flashes in the distance. This flash caught me by surprise. It seemed to strike just over the top of the hill beside my house. The huge flash and extremely loud thunder clap occurred almost simultaneously. It thoroughly overexposed the shot, and I started to delete it, but then decided to see what I could make of it by messing with the gamma, contrast, saturation, and reversing the colors a few times. The first shot was as it was taken, and the second is after I totally altered it, and cropped it to the most interesting part. I like the abstract result - looks nothing like a flash of lightning.

Nikon D40, 18-55mm lens at 19mm, I set it to a 10 second exposure to wait for a lightning flash. F:11.0, ISO 1600

I personally like the original shot better, as I can tell what it is. The lightning looks quite menacing and scary, almost like an explosion. It's a pretty cool shot just just due to the fact you got it. If you wanted to get something workable out of it, you could try significantly reducing the exposure, highlights, and whites, but idk how much will be workable. No offense, but the second shot does absolutely nothing for me, and I wouldn't have even thought it was a photograph unless you had said so. Looks like some sort of weather radar to me, which would also be appropriate in a storm .

That's the whole point - totally abstract. And trying to make something out of it by reducing the brightness, contrast, and gamma was how it started. Nothing brought out anything looking like a bolt of lightning.

interesting results