First try at lightning - How'd I do?

I always was fascinated by some of the lightning shots on this site. I had an opportunity to try it while on vacation and this was one of the better ones. Any suggestions for this rookie? -Brian

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

these look awesome, i'm a newbie too btw and always wanted to take lightning. i shall be looking for professional advise here too.

Nice! I never succeeded (or tried it even) before. Now I am! I like it, though, I would crop of the foreground and the black corner in the upper left.

This is a great capture. Personally, I have never been able to. Hope you dont mind, but this is what I would have done to it. Crop out the fence, and the pier, then straighten the horizon.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

Yeah, though I would crop a little less on the left and work a little more with levels and contrast.

I really like the crop really helps

just wanted to say, the horizon is not straight, but with the crop its all "fixed" Very nice pic

I haven't had a chance to try to shoot lightning yet but I will try as soon as I can but we havn't had any here in a long time. What were you're camera settings? when ever I shoot in low light/ night my shutter speed is always slow.

Great lightning capture! To make it more dramatic, straighten the horizon and crop off the railing at the bottom of the image.

Thanks for all the replies so far. I should mention this it is straight out of the camera. I was so excited that I was able to do it in the first place I forgot to actually LOOK at some of the details. Thanks for all the comments. It will make me work harder.

The capture info and camera settings should be recorded with the shot and easily viewed in your editing software. Any feeback would be great as I am also looking to get into some of these shots.

Cheers,
Mark.

Wow! It looks stunning and the crop also helps.

I have only tried to capture lightning once and missed every strike.

I really think you should stop down a few. It's showing as an f/3.5. If you stop down to f/8 or so you'll get better definition on the strike. It's usually hard enough since most shots are in/out of rain shafts which can steal some of the detail of both the strike and the surrounding area. The key to all good lightning shots are location and compostion. As most have stated, the railing is distracting and it's not level. Most have trouble with getting power lines and trees out of the frame also. Make sure you give the lightning as much of the frame as possible to 'pose' on as you can. Good luck!!