Upper St. Clair, PA

For the last three summers, I have been on a quest to photograph lightning. At first, I blindly tried to just snap the shutter fast enough and then I realized I would rarely be fast enough, so I delved into some research. There are a lot of websites that tell you how to adjust your camera settings to grab the right shot but one basic rule of thumb applies: get the exposure is long as you can. In general, long exposure is achieved by either shooting in a dark setting or by using a small aperture and low ISO. For daytime lightning, in addition to to a small aperture and low ISO, I have started using either a neutral density or polarizer filter, or sometimes both lightning shots to achieve a longer exposure. Some advice tells you to set your camera to Bulb, the F-stop to 8, and ISO to 100 and leave it there, but you will quickly find that those settings work pretty much at night, only.

The other key ingredient is location. I am always on the hunt for the perfect location. At first I had high hopes of capturing a lightning bolt right over the Pittsburgh cityscape but I quickly learned there are a couple of problems with that. First, nearly all our storms come from the south-west, which means  that while standing at Mt. Washington or the West End Overlook and facing the city, the storm is coming over your left shoulder. Secondly, by the time lightning is over the city it is either raining too hard or the lightning is too dangerously close to be standing out on an overlook. I would love to find a location in the South Hills that gives me a clear, open vantage point to the west or south-west. That spot still eludes me. If I lived somewhere  where you could actually see storms coming, I would focus more on composition. Quite honestly, it is very difficult in Western PA. In most cases, the storm is very close before you can see the lightning, so you have a very brief time, with limited opportunities for interesting composition. Maybe I will catch something on vacation out west where you can see the storms for a long time before they arrive.

Lastly, you really can't expect to get a great shot without a solid tripod. The longer I shoot any type of landscape photography, the more valuable I find my tripod.

Not that we are into June, we really only have another 3-6 weeks left where we can expect strong thunderstorms, so I realize these might be the last decent shots I get this year.

South Park, PA

I have benefited from a number of good photography resources lately and I thought it would be a great idea to post the links here and invite you to add to my list in the comments.

 Podcasts/Video

• The Digital Photo Experience
• Photo Focus

 Photo Learning Centers

• Adorama
• Canon Digital Learning Center

 Blogs

• Canon 5D Tips

• Digital Photography School

• Microsoft Pro Photography

• Rick Sammon (Thanks Jennifer Bunce!)
• The Digital Photo Expereince

• Phillip Bloom

Forums

Canon Digital Photography Forums

Books and Magazines

• Photographing the Southwest - Laurent Martres (Three Volumes)

• John Shaw's Landscape Photography

• Popular Photography

Last but not least, Flickr. If you aren't studying the EXIF data on photos you like, you are really missing out.

 You might be thinking, "I don't have time to read these sites every day." Me either and you don't have to. You can either subscribe to an RSS feed or wait until you have a few hours and catch up on the feeds. Don't depend on feedback from your peers or Flickr, go learn from the pros. It's free and it's more effective.

If you haven't found it yet, you can track our vacation planning and updates at http://seetheparkswithus.com

Before:

After

Still too much vignetting, but that for another day.

Snow and a wintery mix have hit the Pittsburgh area tonight.

Watch this car try and fail to make it up Spruceton in Mt. Lebanon.

Stuck from Jenn Grover on Vimeo.

I took a trip up to Edinboro to visit my college friends Jen & Andy last Saturday and to catch a glimpse of their huge snowfall. Some parts of the area received over 52" of snow from one storm last week. After the snow fell, they had a minor ice storm that created some amazing scenery.

We also took a trip over to Presque Isle to take a look at the ice dunes that formed on Lake Erie.