Have you ever had an idea for an image in your head and spent days, weeks, or months trying to produce it. How about four years? That’s how long this photographer (known as wmbpix on social media) spent watching the weather and chasing storms until he was finally able to capture the image he had imagined:
Lightning bolts off the coast of Tybee Island, GA. (click for larger size, imgur)
Perseverance is the lesson here. Even if you there’s a low chance of you getting your ideal image, it’s better than giving up and having no chance. After four years, you would think that this photographer would have given up on getting a good lightning shot. But one morning, he saw a storm off the coast on the radar, grabbed his tripod, and tried once more. And this time, he succeeded.
“4 years of trying to be in the right place at the right time for a good lightning shot. Then one morning I saw a storm on radar off the coast of Savannah Ga. Grabbed my tripod and headed to the Island to try. This one made me very happy. This was shot at Tybee Island Ga”
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I like to shoot my county fair. One year, I had a Beansprout–a little carbeiner of a camera that took a rolls’ worth of VGA-level images (no image review). I had this shot of the bumper cars all lined up and waiting for business–something about it was just kind of cool. I said, “I’m going to have to come back next year and take that shot with a better camera.” That was six years ago, and I still haven’t duplicated the composition with a higher-resolution camera. And then there was the beautiful sunset-behind-the-carousel that I’d never seen before (20 years of shooting), only to have the memory card short out while I was trying to upload it! (The next year they replaced the incandescent lights with LED’s, so I’ll NEVER be able to get that shot again.)
That’s incredible! Congratulations with achieving your objective with a lot of tenacity and patience. It was definitely worth the invested effort. Best wishes with all your photography and thanks for sharing this experience and inspiration.
That’s a long wait. Night time is a lot easier to catch bolt or two and if you’re a Canon user and can install MagicLantern there’s a function that’ll trigger your camera on a Lightning Strike. I’ll give that a go during daylight hours this coming Storm Season. I also like to know my exposure of a scene before the storm arrives and will under-expose by half a stop and use Lightning as my fill light.
I’ve had the same problem for years too! I have some lightning shots, but nothing good enough for the quality of photographs I look for in myself. Plus, where I live, it rarely rains and so lightning is even rarer. This summer I was able to procure some awesome lightning photographs that I’m happy to put in a frame.