The storm rolled in around dinnertime and it flashed and crashed for a couple of hours before the sun set.
A few years ago I experimented with photographing lighting by first hoping for a storm, then setting up a tripod in the front of my garage where sheltered by the overhang of the roof from the pouring rain I would paitently snap hundreds of low-light, long exposure images hoping for the perfect shot.
It’s a terrible and wonderful way to spend an evening with the camera.
About a year ago I handed my patience over to a computer… specifically the computer in my phone. An app I purchased called iLightingCam2 is a finicky camera app whose sole purpose is to monitor a portion of the live camera feed and “detect” flashes (that could be lighting) and save a buffered image when it detects a candidate.
It’s partially cheating, yes. It’s a phone camera, true. But consider that:
a) I still needed to sit at the end of my garage for an hour, in a thunderstorm to capture a single epic shot,
b) the dozens of settings and weak ability to focus the camera in the pitch darkness of a late summer rainstorm makes getting the app to work effectively is actually a challenge, and
c) if you don’t hold the camera level and steady it “detects” literally hundreds of false positives that turn out to be blurry pictures of the streetlight across the road or the reflections of the same on the road.
Last night I used the app for the second time successfully and captured a mix of good and not-so-good lighting shots. I include a small selection in this post to demonstrate the breadth of the app’s ability.