Benjamin Graham
Lightning strike on Malibongwe, Johannesburg.
My first ever photograph of a lightning strike. I've wanted one of these for years but was never organised when a storm hit and frankly didn't know how it was done. Incase you're interested this is 18s (on bulb) at iso 800 with f/11 the white balance made a big difference too, tungsten, so the car lights come out yellow and the lightning comes out blue, read this awhile back and it proved totally right. I'm a little bummed about the rain on my windscreen but I don't have a weather sealed camera so I had to stay inside the car, also meant I couldn't use a tripod so this was me using my steering wheel for support.
I was under the impression that the highveld (the high altitude platuea that Johannesburg sits on) had a very high concentration of lightning strikes and while it's definitely true that we get far more strikes than the Cape I did a little research and discovered that we aren't ranked that high. With an average of 36 strikes per sq kilometre in the area with the highest density, which is infact (big suprise here) Costmore just next to the Drakensberg. The highest density of lightning strikes in the world is infact kifuka in the Congo with 158 strikes per year per sq kilometre they put us to shame. But I still look forward to our spring and summer lightning storms with their torrential rain and window rattling thunder strikes. I'm not as excited about the potholes that appear the next day though, almost drove into one today. And last nights storm was spectacular, so much so that I stopped on the side of the road and took this. I haven't touched this image, it came out of the camera beautifully exposed. This is also the first decent image I've taken with my new ultrawide lens (which is awesome btw).
Its better viewed on black (click the image)
Lightning strike on Malibongwe, Johannesburg.
My first ever photograph of a lightning strike. I've wanted one of these for years but was never organised when a storm hit and frankly didn't know how it was done. Incase you're interested this is 18s (on bulb) at iso 800 with f/11 the white balance made a big difference too, tungsten, so the car lights come out yellow and the lightning comes out blue, read this awhile back and it proved totally right. I'm a little bummed about the rain on my windscreen but I don't have a weather sealed camera so I had to stay inside the car, also meant I couldn't use a tripod so this was me using my steering wheel for support.
I was under the impression that the highveld (the high altitude platuea that Johannesburg sits on) had a very high concentration of lightning strikes and while it's definitely true that we get far more strikes than the Cape I did a little research and discovered that we aren't ranked that high. With an average of 36 strikes per sq kilometre in the area with the highest density, which is infact (big suprise here) Costmore just next to the Drakensberg. The highest density of lightning strikes in the world is infact kifuka in the Congo with 158 strikes per year per sq kilometre they put us to shame. But I still look forward to our spring and summer lightning storms with their torrential rain and window rattling thunder strikes. I'm not as excited about the potholes that appear the next day though, almost drove into one today. And last nights storm was spectacular, so much so that I stopped on the side of the road and took this. I haven't touched this image, it came out of the camera beautifully exposed. This is also the first decent image I've taken with my new ultrawide lens (which is awesome btw).
Its better viewed on black (click the image)