To me, shooting lightning really takes no skill at all, other than keeping the rain off of your lens (which was tough this night as a small amount of mist would require me to wipe it off after each shot). I just judge the brightness of the bolts and how close they are, stop it down as desired (these were between f/5.6 - 9.0 on Tv mode), then fire off 30 second exposures. If you're lucky enough to not have any rain, then you could use a cheap shutter release cable, then set your camera to continuous shooting. And having that thing on, you could just walk away as it fires 30 second exposures off, continuously, so you don't miss a bolt. Luck and the right storms are what makes great lightning photos, great.
I handheld this one and got lucky:
I've been doing a lot of fishing lately with luck from time to time and have decided I need a boat badly. I plan on purchasing one over the winter hopefully to use in the early spring and for summer (obviously not much between April, May and June ;) ).
There's not much hope for severe weather in the next 10 days either as the current long range models are showing. I'm pretty anti-hurricane as the eye candy appeal isn't as great as it is with supercells. I could careless to chase one any time soon or even learn more about them. Wind...lots of wind...for hours isn't my cup of tea. If I wanted to experience that, I'd drive into squall lines more often! It seems as though hurricane chasing is more of a survival-of-the-fittest among those who chase them. Yawn. Just give me a slow-moving, striated supercell in Western Kansas on any day and I'll take that over a Cat 5 cane over New York City.
