Shooting the Heavens, Celestial and Worldly

The wonderful ever-changeable British weather has given me the chance to try my hand at shooting the elements recently, and this past Monday evening I found myself faced with an opportunity that was too good to miss. Sitting on the sofa, watching a DVD with Yol, we heard the first rumble of thunder of the oncoming storm, and sure enough a few minutes later we saw the lightning. Getting a lightning shot is something I've always wanted to try, but it has to be the right kind of lightning - sheet lightning is no good, it has to be forked. So, there on the sofa, I spied forked lightning and knew what I had to do!

It didn't matter that I was dressed only in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. When the opportunity presents itself, you grab your gear and get out there, and that's what I did, pausing long enough to shove my boots on, grab an umbrella and tripod. I set up in the back garden, nice wide lens range (18mm), set the f-stop to something like 22, and set the exposure to 'bulb', which means that I have to stand there with my finger on the button keeping the shutter open.

It is pot luck as to whether you get a lightning strike whilst your shutter is open, and even more luck if it happens to be where your camera is pointing. I was out in the garden for around half an hour, I took around 40 shots, and I got one shot with lightning in, but that one shot was enough!:



The skies over Stoke have proven fertile grounds for my snapping these past few weeks, with the sunsets being particularly photogenic. This one I shot in late April, and the spot in the lower right hand corner of the sun is something that I can't explain. It's not a lens smudge, as it appeared in all of the shots I took that evening in the same place on the sun, regardless of where it was in the frame!:



In this past week, the sunset has been photo-worthy for a different reason, for the effect that the dying of the light has against the sky itself, and the wonderful tones and shades that the clouds adopt as the sun goes down:




Another feature of the heavens that I like to shoot, as you probably already know, is the moon, and this week I found myself with two chances to shoot it in its different phases. I normally shoot the full moon, but this week I took the chance to shoot the crescent moon and the half moon:





The moon never really changes, the face of the moon that we see as it orbits around us doesn't change, which means that when it comes to seeing the detail on the moon, we will always end up seeing the same detail in every shot. But that doesn't stop my fascination with shooting it!

Whether you're a photographer or not, I think it's always refreshing to stop once in a while, take a look around, and drink in the beauty of our skies and beyond. It can be so breathtaking!

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