My camera shoots fascists#StormChasing at Mono Lake again today. The sky is getting an early start! Some inter-cloud rumbling going on in a big cell moving over the lake right now. Crossing my fingers for some good strikes ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Killer setup, though it seems this cell dropped its lightning over the mountains to the west. I have one camera doing a timelapse and the other one with a lightning trigger.
Unfortunately, the cell in the last photo moved hard northeast, away from the lake, but there's a smaller one moving across our east end of the lake now. Rain but no lightning so far. The prediction was for this to start at 11 this morning and go all day, but so far nothing else seems to be on the radar.
The scattered cells that missed my spot this morning consolidated SE of Walker Lake, NV and blew up. In retrospect, after watching the storm's progress on radar, it turns out that I could have caught up to it. It was about an hour away, so I assumed it would have been played out by then. Instead, it amplified. Eh, win some, lose some.
Now I'm just waiting to see if the afternoon forecast is correct and some new storms form over Mono Lake. Right now, the radar shows nothing heading this way.
#StorageChasing #StormWaiting
So, to follow up on this weekend's #StormChasing adventure. I made a last minute, somewhat counter-intuitive decision to go from the northwest side of Mono Lake over to the SW side, to the South Tufa area, even though a large visible cell was headed out of the Sierras straight toward that area. Chances were that I'd get rained out, but it's the tufa towers that really identify a shot as "Mono Lake" more than anything, so that is the shot I really wanted.
Unexpectedly, the storm track turned and went out across the lake and over the NW side where it dumped rain. So I got a couple bolts and some nice sunset shots after all.
This was my 5th storm chase at Mono Lake, but the first time I got any bolts over the lake. Still not the shot I have in mind, so I'll be back.
#StormChase #MonoLake #Photography #LandscapePhotography #Lightning
Sometimes you get great shots and sometimes you miss great shots. I was, in fact, intentionally angling the umbrella into the lens while looking through the viewfinder to get a sense of how close I could hold it and still be out of the frame when this bolt struck. I heard the lightning trigger trip the shutter, so knew I got the shot, but had no idea what it looked like until I got home.
"Lightning just out of frame" and "lighting while wiping off the lens" are two common genres of #StormChasing photography. I got both in one shot!
Jef Poskanzer@Mikal Lightning trigger! Had not heard of that before. Is it basically the same idea as a slave flash?
Exact opposite. The sensor reads an infrared burst that apparently happens before the visible bolt and triggers the shutter.