A Momentary Lapse
Sunday, July 12, 2020
Our intrepid explorers had a brief hiatus as D retreated east to refresh his Philadelphia accent (and to observe the Fourth); meanwhile S convalesced in various non-vacation spots: the hospital, at home, and atop a plateau watching clouds. Mostly dehydration, in the former case, and over-hydration, in the latter, at least in some parts of town, where much pummeling by rain and lightning occurred.
Image Notes
The photo above was taken at 8:46pm, last Thursday, July 9, looking northeast from a pull-out along Highway 128 west of Superior. The sun was well below the mountains, illuminating only the top of this enormous cumulonimbus. As it turns out, many people photographed this cloud, and many of their photos appeared on the evening news as “picture of the day.” (I did not submit mine, except eventually to Instagram.) After taking the last sunset shot, I loaded my camera into the car, only to glance back and see that the dark cloud was now filled with lightning. So I unloaded my camera again, and shot another hundred pics, trying to capture the incredible intracloud lightning; alas, this never quite worked.
Some lessons:
Drink at least two liters of water every day.
Use the camera’s intervalometer, instead of pressing the shutter 100 times.
Try shorter exposures of 8-10 seconds and higher ISO (1600), rather than 30 seconds at ISO 100. 30 second exposures work better for cloud-ground lightning at night, as in this image, taken at 9:27pm:
Not sure what star that is above the storm. Based on some sky charts on the web, I’m guessing it’s Deneb, on the tail of Cygnus, or possibly Vega, which is higher and brighter.
All in all, another successful non-BNO BNO.
❖