My photo at left was all set up to show the girl using the laptop so I could see her face and the screen. I used three lights and it is an okay photo. After I was done shooting and beginnig to pack up my gear, Molly got back in her bed and grabbed the laptop. A real moment happened. I shot available light and got a much nicer photo that has a more genuine feel to it.

One of the great parts of photojournalism is finding a moment within an assignment.  If you shoot all the time you know exactly what I mean.  You go to an assignment, it is a routine job and you are shooting away and then something wonderful happens.  There is an expression or a gesture or a movement and you nail it.  Then the assignment goes back to the regularly scheduled normality.

For one crystal clear, shining moment, something really nice happened and you found it, dug it out, captured it, pick your expression.  Henri Cartier-Bresson coined that phrase, the decisive moment, to define times like this.  Sometimes you get it.  Sometimes you miss it and knock yourself upside the head.  Sometimes you just don’t see it.  Life flows along like a placid river and suddenly, out jumps a moment like a beautiful trout bursting through the surface with the sun back lighting the water drops and you nail it.  That’s the kind of thing I am talking about.

The question is, how do I do that?  Bad news, there is no real answer to that question.  The good news is you can still do it and I, being the nice guy that I am, offer these tips to you free of charge.  Of course, when you go out and nail your first trout bursting through the stream, you can feel free to send me a generous contribution.  (Now there is an LOL moment!)  Seriously now, there are a few things to watch for and here we go.

Number one, keep an eye on the person you are assigned to photograph.  What kind of person are you dealing with.  A sour, dour person is not very likely to give up the trout but when you get a person with a great personality who interacts well with people, be ready.  So personality plays a role for sure.  Next, what situation are you photographing the person in.  You might get a shot in a staged portrait setting but it is not as likely as if you are photographing the person in a fluid environment where there is natural interaction and movement.  Who is the person interacting with?  Like the lady pastor in these photos, adults interacting with kids is a prime fishing stream.  Kids bring out the best in all of us and cause us to take down our personality shields.  Eyes wide open in these situations.

I tend to believe that every assignment, even those staged portrait assignments, have “a moment.”  In a staged situation you are more likely to get that moment when you interact well with the subject.  Keep a light hearted banter going.  If the situation is not light hearted then keep some communication going that will help the person relax and show themselves to you.  Time never hurts.  The more time you spend with a subject the more likely you are to find a moment.  Be yourself and try and bring out the personality in your subject.

From the technical point of view all I can tell you is always be ready.  There are so many photos I have missed because I quit shooting that I can’t number them.  This is incredibly frustrating.  Once you have “switched off” the photographer and get ready to leave or have stopped looking and started just chatting as you wind an assignment down things tend to happen and they tend to happen naturally.  Never forget, people  put on for the camera and when you take the camera down they go back to being themselves.  That is when you have to be ready.  You will be surprised how often pictures happen after the assignment is over.  Be a Boy Scout.  You know, always be prepared.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

I really like this image but left it out of my edit, not due to ethical problems but technical ones.

Here is an issue that comes up from time to time.  You have shot an assignment and you have a range of photos.  There are photos that are highly representative of the event and there are other photos that are not quite as representative but still good story telling moments and then you have photos that don’t really represent the event.  That is not to say the images were not shot during the event it is just that the photos are not representative of the flavor of the event.  To make matters worse, your favorite image may come from that last group.

Now you are sitting at your computer editing the images and have to make a decision.  Do I include a photo in my edit that, even though it is a good, maybe even a great image, if it does not accurately represent the event or person in the photo.  Let me give you a good example.  I shot a Christian event Saturday night which was aimed at youth and was designed to help reach them in areas of their lives where there might be problems.  I was there during one of the concerts and the group performing was “The Letter Black.”  They were screamers and I mean that literally for you old guys.  My ears could pick up an understandable lyric once in a while but it was interspersed with the screaming.  Imagine the hardest rock and roll from your youth and pump that up a few notches then add in Christian lyrics and screaming.

So the band is young and the lead singer is a very attractive woman.  She gives her testimony and is clearly Christian, no faking apparent.  The problem in the photo edit is she often looks pretty sexy and it is really hard to tell the difference between this Christian screamer band and one that is just a regular screamer band.  I have to be careful in the photo edit to select photos that are representative of the “flavor” of the event without miscasting this band, and the lead singer in particular, as something they are not.  I intentionally left a couple of photos of her out of my edit for the newspaper because her posture in the image would be viewed by many as decidedly un-Christian.

I know some of you guys who don’t live in the conservative Bible Belt will scratch your head and wonder what is wrong with these pictures.  There is really nothing wrong with them.  In this very conservative area of the country some folks will find a few images objectionable and others will wonder what exactly was “Christian” about the Christian concert event.  So my comments are aimed at editing to that audience. It is important to know the value system of the people living in your area.  That is why obscenity laws are so vague.  What is obscene in Alabama may not be considered obscene in a large city in another part of the country.

Were the photos inaccurate?  Of course not.  It was literally what she was doing on stage.  Did the photos convey the spirit of the event?  Not really because they actually were performing a Christian show even if it is not my particular flavor of Christian.  But hey, they were not playing for me.  They were playing for a bunch of teens.  I would not have been technically wrong to have included one of the photos in my edit but I would have been wrong none the less because it would have misrepresented the band.

This is a fairly innocent example of ethical photo editing.  Where this gets serious is when it involves a breaking news situation or the portrayal of a public figure.  The still image is a powerful thing.  Mark Twain is quoted as saying there are lies, damn lies and statistics.  His means you can make numbers say anything you want.  Likewise, a still image which is captured in a sliver of time can be used to say anything.  For instance, you could be shooting a politician gesturing to a crowd and the still image could show an embarrassing arrangement of the fingers, if you know what I mean.  In a moving image no one would have noticed anything out of the ordinary but in that one split second a finger could be out of place creating a completely unintended gesture.

The list could go on and on but the idea is the still image can convey powerful thoughts, suggestions and innuendos and we are the guardians of truth.  Was the image on my screen actually indicative of what was happening in front of me?  That camera can be a powerful tool.  It has the ability to break a man.  Don’t believe it?  Remember Gary Hart’s political career was ruined by a snapshot of a woman, not his wife, who was sitting on his lap.  That was an accurate image and look at the power that snapshot conveyed.  It completely changed America’s perception of him and ruined his aspirations for the presidency.

Most of us won’t be shooting photos that ruin a presidential campaign but the lesson is treat people ethically.  Photographs have tremendous power to shape perceptions and as photojournalists we have an obligation not just to be accurate but to be ethical as well.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employers.

These photos are mostly feature type photos.   We do a lot of features during the year and summer presents an extra heavy demand for stand alone art.  Vacations, slow news days and things like that call for those lazy days of summer pictures.  We also have a fair number of festivals and events geared around the great outdoors so most of these photos are drawn from situations like that.  Don’t try to learn anything.  Just sit back with a nice glass of Southern sweet tea and have a look.

By the way, you can click that little funny looking box in the lower right corner of the slide show frame and it will give you full screen.

ISO 3200 with a dark skinned person in a burned out mobile home.

I got the D3s Thursday this week and all I can say is “WOW!”  I shot some photos in such bad light in just a couple of days and it blew me away.  The table tennis photos are shot in a gymnasium that is so dark I have never felt good about anything I have shot in that room and this tournament is there every year.  I shot at ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 and the quality is amazing.  It is actually better than ISO 800 on a D2h from just a few years ago.  Stunning is an understatement for the high ISO performance.

The other thing I noticed almost immediately is how well the camera handles high contrast light.  The shot of the lady sheltering under the magazine and fanning herself is an excellent example.  Her face was up-toned just a bit in Photoshop and painted in using history brush but the ability to hold that level of tonal quality is very impressive.

The first image in this post is one of the first images I shot with the camera.  It is inside a still smoldering mobile home where the home owner is inside trying to salvage some of her personal belongings.  A dark skinned African-American in a burned out mobile home with nothing but the light coming in through windows and doors would have been something I would not have tried with anything before the D3.  In this case the D3s really handles the situation very nicely.  When I checked my images I was so pleased and so impressed with the camera performance. This was shot at ISO 3200.

I know I am going on here after only shooting a couple of days but this is a truly impressive camera.  By the way, here is an instructive note for young photojournalists.  I got to this fire way too late to make a fire fighting picture.  I almost left.  Even went to my car with the intention of leaving.  I put my 80-200 in the car and then I admonished myself about not being a professional and turned around and walked back up to the fire scene.  I waited around shooting absolutely nothing.  I just chatted with a couple of firemen and waited.  I noticed someone inside the mobile home with no fire gear on and decided to see what was going on.  I went around back and met the lady just as she was coming out with some stuff.  I asked her if she was able to salvage anything and she said she didn’t think so.  When she went back in I followed her.  I made a few frames while she rummaged around the kitchen and living room and got this frame as she came away with some shoes.  Lesson learned, you never know what you will get by just hanging around and doing your job even when there appears literally nothing to be had.  Now, back to our regularly scheduled post.

I have included a frame grab from video in this post too.  It is the photo of the No Trespassing sign.  The D3s has a 1080 x 720 HD video mode and this is a grab from my first video attempt.  I was just playing around trying to get familiar with what the camera does with video so it is no great shakes but I had some fun.  Man, that is unexpected.  I have always hated on video  but now I can hardly wait to start.  The frame grab is adequate to publish in a newspaper but I wouldn’t want to try it on anything like slick paper.

I threw in the photo of the little girl having watermelon and the kids running a three legged race as examples of performance in shady situations.  The race has a strong backlight which I hate shooting into but this one works out nicely.  The little hispanic girl has such beautiful skin tone it just floored me.  And finally, I shot a really serious wreck on the Interstate and included this frame from the take.  It is nothing to write home about but I was impressed with the image because it was shot with a really and truly worn out 400mm lens.  Most of the coating is gone on the front element so it has little contrast and will flare at the drop of a hat.  This image turned out very nice with good tones and contrast.

For a first few days of shooting I couldn’t be more impressed with the camera.  I am really looking forward to doing some video work and I will share some of that when I get a chance.  All I can say is if you have a spare five grand laying around and wondering what to do with it you could do a lot worse than buying yourself a D3s.  One final note.  These images are toned exactly as I toned them for output to our newspaper’s production system and they were toned in a hurry.  There may have been some sharpening applied to one or two of them but I honestly don’t remember now which ones.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Click the cover image to go to FNF's online site.

I have been working in photojournalism for very nearly 20 years and I had never shot a magazine cover for any publication not done by the newspaper I worked for.  That all changed when David Wassan, editor of the new publication, Friday Night Football Alabama contacted me to shoot two athletes for the premier edition of the magazine.  Brooke Milam Johnson, a sports writer I have worked with for several years at The Decatur Daily, recommended me to Wassan so many thanks go out to her.  The magazine just hit the news stands and can be found in Books A Million stores and news stands across Alabama.

My subjects were Stephen Rivers, younger brother of San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, who plays quarterback for Athens High School and Brent Calloway who plays linebacker and running back for Russellville High School.  I was familiar with Stephen because I have covered him for three seasons.  It was my first time meeting Brent.  Stephen recently committed to play for LSU and Brent for Alabama so these are both blue chip recruits. (By the way, I also covered Philip Rivers when he played quarterback at Athens.  Talk about getting old!)

My challenge was to produce photos of each athlete that could be used on the cover of the magazine.  The photo shoots would be in different locations on different days and even at different times of the day.  I wanted the lighting to match fairly closely so the designers wouldn’t have funky differences to deal with.  I also needed to shoot very similar poses on both young men so the designers could work with similar images.

I photographed Stephen first and it was right in the middle of the day.  When I called his coach to arrange the assignment I had visions of late evening, even dusk, dancing through my head.  The coach asked could I be there during the middle of the morning because that was when Stephen was normally there to take part in out of season workouts and his jersey would be available.  So much for dreams of great light.  Likewise, I had to catch Brent right after a practice session but the light was somewhat better.

I set a Lumedyne with an Octobank as the main light and positioned it to camera left for both shoots.  I used a second light as a kicker.  This was necessary in Stephen’s case because of the need to completely overcome the daylight with strobes.  The kicker was behind the subjects and to the camera right.  I placed a third strobe on the ground pointed straight up to light the ball they were both holding.  I had Stephen positioned so his right shoulder was further from the camera than his left and had him hold the football down by his side in his left hand.  I reversed this set up to photograph Brent so the designers could get both guys on the page in the best possible way.

After getting my lighting set I varied my angles of view and lenses making sure to duplicate with Brent each angle I shot with Stephen.  I began with a full length shot from low angle, moved to a more normal angle shot from about waist level.  I then changed lenses and shot more of a 3/4 length portrait and then shot some tighter stuff.  This gave several different perspectives and hopefully some options to the page designer.

After I got this shot out of the way I moved into a little bit of a fun mode.  I moved Stephen into the tunnel and shot with a strong back light from the sun which cast a really hard shadow on the ground.  I filled this with an SB800 shot direct with as tight a zoom spread as possible.  I still  had more spill than I wanted but I didn’t bring anything to make a snoot from.  I went again from wide and low to extremely tight in a shot that was basically just shoulder pads and eyes with no fill light at all.  This turned out to be my favorite shot of Stephen.  It was just his eyes.  The hard back light reflecting off his jersey and the walls of the tunnel was the only light.

On Brent’s shoot I did a variety of lighting effects and poses with the ball which pretty much amounted to my old standby lighting style of two lights crossed on the subject.  Brent has a wonderfully intense look when he wants to and I was able to capitalize on this for some really nice tight work.  It was not the same as Stephen’s set up but I didn’t think this would be used on the cover anyway so I wasn’t worried about duplication.

I then moved Brent into a kind of portable tunnel which was a metal frame covered with a white tarp style covering.  I was hoping that I could do a nice lighting effect by placing a strobe behind him fired down the tunnel with a front light which ended up being a Lumedyne in an umbrella.  I was very pleased with this shot even though it was not used in the magazine.  The rear strobe did its work and the tunnel picked up a kind of ripple in the fabric creating a nice effect.

I really enjoyed working with both of these guys.  Both of them present themselves very well and I look forward to covering them in their senior seasons this year and then in the SEC for a few years to come.  Who knows, there may be another brother combination at quarterback in the NFL before too many years have gone by.  I imagine Stephen will have to dodge a few blitzes from Brent over the next couple of seasons.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.   The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer.

I can say without hesitation the D3 is the finest photojournalism tool I have used since the inception of digital photography.  The D3 returns available light photography to the photojournalist and that is a great thing.  All previous entries into the pro market by Nikon have been, at best, a test of ones skills and patience in order to produce acceptable images.  I have fought through the D1, D2H and D2Hs before arriving at the D3.  There is no comparison.  It is like the D3 came from a different company, maybe even a different planet. It is really a quantum leap for Nikon.

As I mentioned, the greatest thing about this camera is its ability to perform under available light.  Almost any light really even if any light is basically no light at all.  This thing sees in the dark.  In fact, the high ISO performance is so good I think it is better than any high speed film I ever used.  When the lights go down it is like this camera kicks it into a higher performance mode.  I can’t say enough about its low light performance.  It is just excellent.  I have shot stellar images all the way up through ISO 5000 which is about as high as I have used it on anything like a consistent basis.

If the D3 has a weakness it is auto-focus performance in bright, contrasty light.  By weakness I mean that it has some trouble finding a solid focus point at certain times on really bright, sunny days.  I have never had any problems with AF in any other light but this one is consistent enough to note.  Otherwise the AF is excellent.  Like every digital camera I have ever used it does have an imaging weakness in one particular lighting condition.  I wish I could describe it accurately but it is just this Alabama thing that happens sometimes and the imaging performance falls off sharply.  It is kind of a flat light situation on medium overcast days that seem to really baffle it.  I have never found a digital camera that handled this well.  My Canon EOS 5D acts pretty much the same way in that circumstance.

In terms of image quality, this camera has some of the cleanest whites coming out of the box I have ever seen.  In fact, the whites are so clean they are almost blue.  I could stand just a touch of warmth in some of the images because it is corrected a bit to the blue side for my taste.  You can deal with this in your sub-menus that allow fine tuning of each color mode giving you the option of warming things up.  I have yet to hit on one that strikes me just right but the ability to set colors to my preference is nice.

I have had only one performance problem with the camera.   When shooting in RAW mode and shooting a sequence the camera begins acting like it has a full buffer and slows down the frame capture rate significantly after about five sequential frames.  It does this in jpeg fine mode once in a while.  I have talked to a Nikon rep about the problem and he didn’t know what was going on and has been unable to find anyone at Nikon who does.  It is probably some quirk in this particular body that does that.  It certainly is not a universal problem.

The other thing I really like about this camera is I can shoot in jpeg mode rather than RAW.  This saves both card space and archiving space.  In previous Nikon bodies I had to shoot RAW to be able to make the images look right.  The jpegs that come out the camera are very nearly as good as the ones produced by my EOS 5D and that is a huge leap forward for Nikon.  The jpeg files that have in-camera noise management applied also look very good.  In fact, noise is just not a problem with this camera.  It looks great.

I am as completely satisfied with this camera as I have ever been with a digital body.  It has a place in my heart right next to the Nikon F3 which is in my humble opinion the best Nikon I ever used prior to this one.  The D3 has restored my faith in Nikon after years of the company producing products that made me scratch my head.  Now I am looking forward to the D3s which is on order.  Video anyone?

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.  Lets begin with Anna Craig, the young musician.  This is a one light portrait with indirect, late afternoon sunlight with some mixed cloud cover being the other light source.  The light is an SB800 fired into an umbrella at camera right.  The umbrella was intended to put light on the face without overpowering the ambient.  It was merely a complimentary source.

Next, Julie Gill beneath stained glass is a bit more of a challenge.  It is a two light portrait with two SB800s fired direct as the main lights.  The sun was extremely bright and I had to overcome it enough to keep detail in her amazing stain glass.  The SBs are set up opposite one another in a classic cross light configuration with the one to camera right being dominant.  The lights were actually mounted to the framework of the gazebo.

The portrait of car salesman Snooky Hairrell is a one light shot done through glass which reflected the cars outside.  We are actually in the showroom inside an office so the reflection is about three windows removed.  The light was laid down on a desk in the office and bounced into the wall at camera right.

The portrait of football manager Bronson Parker is a three light set up.  The key light is mounted via magic arm to a structure in the locker room ceiling and pointed straight down.  There is another SB800 fired into an umbrella at camera left to fill the face.  There is a final light set behind him and aimed at the lockers to bring out some color and detail there.

The portrait of the ships captain is a very simple single light shot.  I laid the SB800 down on the frame of the window and aimed it at the slender window frame which bounced some light into his face.  Diffuse daylight is the only other source here.

Both portraits of the Special Olympians are identically lit with a single SB800 fired into an umbrella at camera left.  I lit them identically on purpose to try and attain some form of visual harmony in portraits done in entirely different locations.  Beautiful people by the way.

The two portraits of basketball player Jordan Beggs are the most complex.  They are the four light portraits.  I used two SB800s fired through umbrellas located on opposite side of Jordan forming a soft cross light.  I had her dad hold a Vivitar 285 set on its lowest manual power right in front of her as an on axis fill.  The fourth light is a Lumedyne set to 50 watt seconds and aimed to sweep across the floor bringing out that rich amber color.  It was hot in that gym.  It was at least 100 degrees in there with no air moving and a thunderstorm going on outside.  Fun times.

Last but not least is the portrait of Eugene Glenn and his Model A Ford.  This is an adaptation of the portrait I did a couple of years ago that some you remembered when I shot the Smart Car, the little yellow thing that looks like it was smiling.  This is a two light portrait and neither light is actually in the car.  The main light is a snooted SB80o at camera left and aimed to shoot through the window without creating a nasty reflection in the window.  The other is and SB28DX placed outside the drivers side window and fired to light the side of the car and the side of Mr. Glenn’s face.

Hopefully, everyone made 100 percent on this little test.  If not, try try again.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Anna Craig is a Hartselle High Senior who has already cut her debut CD. She recorded the five song disc this summer in Daytona Beach, FL.

Don’t misunderstand.  I know that many people who specialize in the portrait love the starkness and visual simplicity of having nothing but the subject in a photo.  They have the ability to distill the essence of the individual with nothing more than a blank backdrop, the camera and whatever light they are going to use.  I think of the famous portrait of Winston Churchill when I think of this style of portraiture.  It is fabulous but it is not for me.

I love being on location.  I love the challenge of either working with the existing light or overcoming it.  I love finding something of the person in his or her environment.  I don’t know when this started because I remember distinctly how I used to disdain any situation that was contrived or set up in any way.  One day the switch just flipped and I began finding a pleasurable challenge in the environmental portrait.

This series of portraits literally runs the gamut for me.  There are one light portraits, two light portraits, three light portraits and even a four light portrait.  That, of course, is the lights I have added because, in most cases, daylight is also involved.  I probably should make you deconstruct each photo and tell me the number of lights in each portrait.  That might be fun.  Besides, what kind of teacher would I be if I never gave a test.  So, ahem, class, class, please take out your test booklets and match the number of lights to each portrait and kindly post your answers in the comments section.  There will be no prize awarded for this only the knowledge gained from your experience.  If you really want to get creative you can tell me where the lights are positioned.  Now there is a tester!

Just on a personal note here, I really enjoyed photographing the people in these pictures.  The captions will tell you something of their stories and if you are really interested you can go to decaturdaily.com and look up each person for the story associated with the photo.  Of course, some of them will be under our subscription lock so that won’t work for all of them.  The combo portrait of the Special Olympians is very special to me.  One of the people, Lucas Compton, was one of my subjects in The Upside of Down.  He is a very special young man and I absolutely love being around him.

I could really go on and on about these fine people.  I never cease to be amazed how willing people are to share their lives and their stories with me.  It is a true privilege and pleasure.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

I found James Troupe shovelling dirt and mud off of a bridge in Limestone County on a brutally hot afternoon. A logging company hires him to clean off the bridge every day to keep people from having accidents should it rain. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 7/20/10

This is especially true of weather features.  The harder you look for a hot weather feature the less likely you are to find one.  I learned more about shooting these dang things from watching a movie about two dogs and a cat than from reading any photo book.  Chance, the very hungry dog, tried so hard to get food from the guests at a party but just couldn’t come up with a bite.  Sassy, the finicky feline, shows him how it is done by pretending like she doesn’t really want the food all the while the guests are shoving it at her.  There you go.  The secret to finding hot weather, cold weather, rainy weather, average weather or just about any dadgum kind of weather feature you can think of is to not try at all to find them.

For whatever reason looking for weather related features offends Mother Nature so she hides them.  When you pretend not to care she gets her dander up and becomes determined to show off her weather and goes out of her way to stick weather features right in front of your nose.  Need a feature on a snowy day?  Just put your feet up in front of the fire and say to no one in particular, “I wouldn’t shoot a picture of a kid sledding today for love nor money!.”  She hears you and wham, bam, a half dozen sledders will be practically banging into your front door hoping to have a photo made.

When it gets hot all you have to do is turn the AC up another notch and look the other way when you pass by a swimming pool or a fountain and say to no one in particular, “I couldn’t care less if the whole city bakes itself into a souffle, I wouldn’t shoot a hot weather photo today if life itself depended on it.”  Before you know it there are twenty five people walking down the sidewalk right beside your car furiously mopping sweat from their brows and at least seven kids dumping bottles of water on each other just begging you to get out and shoot their picture.

Forget about all the fancy stuff they teach you in photo school.  All you really need to know you learned by watching a movie about pets!

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer who I hear is seriously intimidated by Mother Nature.  Just in case Mother Nature can read, I spent a lot of time in the sun today and I am slightly out of my head so I hope you won’t go out of your way more than any other day to hide your weather from me.

Here is an example of allowing the baseline ambient exposure determine your overall exposure for the image. I exposed for the building and waited.

Okay, first of all let me say I stink at getting good lightning photos.  I got lucky with these the other night shooting literally in my back yard.  I stink at shooting lightning for the same reason I can’t fish.  Two reasons really, I am not lucky and I am not patient.  The luck part is because I can’t control where thunderstorms happen and for whatever reason when I show up with a camera the storm seems to clam up and save its lightning bolts for someone else.  Better still, the best lightning happens while my camera writes the previous image to the card.  Now that is frustrating.

The other reason is I am impatient.  To successfully shoot lightning you have to have the patience of a good fisherman.  Lighting strikes but n0t always where you can see it.  The storm the other night is a great example.  The lightning was flashing so frequently it looked like paparazzi at and Elvis sighting.  The flashes were nearly continuous but most of them, like 90 plus percent, were all either inside the cloud or were streaking in areas out of my field of vision.  Patience allows you to wait it out until you get the frame you are looking for and I am not willing to invest too much time waiting for something that might not happen.

I didn’t mention that I don’t presently own a tripod.  Actually, I have not owned a tripod in so many years I don’t really remember the last time I did own a tripod.  I am contemplating purchasing one with the idea I will have to have one when my video capable SLR arrives in a month or so.  From all I have seen a good set of sticks is almost a prerequisite to shooting solid video.  We will see.

Without the tripod I am left bracing the camera against first one thing and then another.  These lighting photos were shot with my camera sitting on top of a large, plastic recycling container the city issues.  The trick becomes positioning the camera in such a way that it doesn’t move around during the exposure.  I just put my hand on it to hold it in place but I have used my camera bag to stabilize a long exposure in the past.  I have always been a whatever works kind of guy.

The other part of good lightning photos is safety.  I am always envious of the lightning photos I see from the west, especially from places like Phoenix.  They have these great sight lines where there are no obstructions for miles and miles and you can see individual thunderstorm cells from a great distance.  Down South we have our storms obstructed by the heavy tree cover and the lay of the land.  That means the lightning is all over you before you can really shoot photos.  My Dad will quickly tell you if you can hear thunder you are in danger of being hit by lightning.  (You can tell I have heard that one a few times!)  So safety has to top your list when shooting electrical storms.  The metal leg tripod is a wonderful conductor of electricity.

The final problem is, of course, the rain.  Because most storms in this part of the world are not simply there for my photographic pleasure it is important to shoot from cover of some kind.  This relates to not having great sight lines over distance.  If the lighting is close then the rain is close too and this means your multi-thousand dollar SLR is in danger of getting wet.  They don’t seem to like that too much.  And because the sight lines are limited that means shooting with a fairly wide angle lens which is much more susceptible to front element moisture than a hooded telephoto would be.  All in all, shooting lightning is not so easy.

Exposures are the other factor in the equation.  Here is a hint; allow the ambient light to dictate your exposure.  The most effective lightning pictures have other visual elements in them and you will usually be shooting at times after sunset.  My little out building was illuminated by a street light that was about 50 yards away.  The exposure for the building was between 10 and 15 seconds at f5.6 with an ISO of 400.  I bounced back and forth with the exposure between 10 and 15 seconds and moved my ISO around between 200 and 400 until I was relatively happy with the results.  Find your base ambient and work from that.  Your results will be far better than just guessing and hoping.

Once in a while I try shooting lightning in daylight.  This is borderline insane because about the best exposure you can hope for is 1/4 at f22 ISO 200 and that is with a particularly dark storm cloud late in the day.  It is really pot luck and catching a lighting bolt by reflex is close to impossible.  It happens to fast.  Once in a while you might get one if the lightning bolt is intense and hangs there for a little longer.  Of course when this happens you will be very close and you will be likely running for cover and miss the shot anyway.  Bottom line is lightning photos are great and beautiful but you must never forget that lightning kills more people annually than any other storm characteristic.  Let’s bet careful out there.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.