Hello Old Friend

It’s been a long time since I've written a post for my Blog, so I thought that I’d revisit the old girl and revive her. Mainly because I've got some stuff to share and because I've had success at trying a new technique that didn't seem to be going well at first !

 I have been a busy boy. 

I've been writing articles for the website of the Photography Chat community I'm heavily involved in, you can find the link on the right hand side. Along with that I've been tidying bits and bobs up in my portfolio and I'm now also a contributor to Getty Images. Hopefully this will bring a few quid in towards camera gear.

Hopefully I'll make a few quid :-)

I recently made my first sale through Getty. One of my images was bought on license by the Bloomberg Group in New York. I didn't make masses of cash from this sale as it was only a small file size, but at least I know my work is being seen and considered usable by a multinational, multimillion dollar firm. :-)

This is the Image they bought. 

So what’s the new technique ? 

 Well I’d been having a chat to my good mate Gary on twitter about not having much motivation for photography lately. I've been doing a lot of Photoshop work, some for me and some for other people, and I just haven’t had the inclination to pick my camera up for weeks. Then I heard the thunder :-) I took a glance out of the window and there was a HUGE thunder cloud rolling in from the East. Photographing lightening is something I've always fancied having a bash at, but never had. Well tonight was the night. I opened the window of my conservatory (Which handily was in the direct path of the incoming storm) and set up on a tripod. Then I started to come across problems. What I wanted was a nice few seconds of exposure with an aperture of around f/8 to catch as much of the light from the bolt as possible. The idea was I’d lock the shutter button down with the cable release and just leave the camera exposing for as long as it took. The problem was that in midsummer at 7:15 pm here in the UK there was still WAY too much light kicking around, so the slowest shutter speed I could get was 1.3 seconds at f/22. I don’t have an ND filter so what I ended up with was this

Just my Little garden 

Based on this I nearly gave up, but I thought that because I've never tried it, and I was set up, and to be honest I love watching thunder storms anyway that I’d keep going. I made a coffee, and sat in my chair next to the camera and just let it click away. About 15 minutes later this happened. 

 Not the most spectacular but now I new I could get something, and that there must be some better lightening out there somewhere hiding in the clouds. So I sat a while longer……..Then I caught the image below. Now bare in mind that it’s taken with a wide angle lens so it was quite a lot closer than it looks. The thunderclap was so loud that it actually hurt my ears and the pressure wave moved my conservatory. It certainly made me shit my pants Jump .

 I'm very pleased with this image for my first try. Next time I'm going to go to higher ground and try and shoot the entire valley (Yes I know high ground isn't good in a thunder storm) And I'm Also well chuffed that one of my images has seen some action through Getty. Hopefully there will be some more in the near future. Cheers for reading guys :-)