Afternoon Thunderstorm, Mescalero Sands, Chaves co., New Mexico. Nikon N-90, 28-70

-- Billy Gorum (Herphoto@aol.com), January 17, 2000

Answers

Aside from some compression/dithering artifacts, it looks awesome.

Care to share your technique?

Cheers,

Keith

-- Keith Clark (clarkphotography@spiritone.com), January 17, 2000.

I agree, an awesome image! The detail and color on the underside of the cloud cover is fantastic.

Well done!

-- Jim Erhardt (canonshooter@att.net), January 17, 2000.

I second Keith, Nice Image.

-- Jan van Bodegraven (jan@macrophoto.com), January 17, 2000.

Thanks for the comments. When I saw this thunderstorm with the sun ready to set behind it I decided it would be worth burning some film on. So I stopped the lens down to its minimum aperature, which gave me a shutter speed of about 1/2 second and tried to predict when the next lightning bolt would flash. The lightning in this storm was happening fairly close together, still out of a whole role of film I got two only frames with lightning. This frame has a fork in the lightning, but it really doesn't show up in the digital image as well as it does in the slide, unless I increase contrast so much that I lose all detail in the dark clouds at the top. Keith, I'm pretty new to this digital stuff, what if anything can I do about the compression/dithering effects you mention?

-- Billy Gorum (Herphoto@aol.com), January 18, 2000.

A outstanding image - one of the best nature shots that I have seen. It has color, composition and power. You should be very proud of yourself.

-- Bahman Farzad (exposeit-right@spotmetering.com), January 19, 2000.