Steak & Storms

What a strange day it was. We woke up to blue skies and this lovely Fall weather lasted till about 11pm. At one point we all sat outside as the temps reached the mid 70's. We fancied a treat after a day of moving chairs to and from the 5th wheel, planting flowers for next year in the front and back yards and, in my case, getting out on the bike for some much needed exercise. So we decided to eat out for supper and headed off to our very favourite restaurant when we are able to push out the proverbial boat.........The Willow Tree in nearby West Branch. I have to assume their web site is still being created as little is in place after the main homepage.

I'd been wanting a good steak for some time and so when I was told that a porterhouse was on the daily specials menu, that was enough for me. It was the perfect way to spend an evening with excellent wine, fabulous food and wonderful company.

We got back home about 9:30pm and settled down with bulging waistlines to watch some tv. The shows kept getting interrupted by storm alerts so we knew they were headed this way - and sure enough the thunder/lightning started about 11pm and was a visual treat for many hours.

I decided to see if I'd learned enough about using my new camera to capture lightning images and so I headed outside to give it a try. I set up the tripod and attached the camera and with torch in hand, I attempted to read the manual and also use my 35 or so years of experience in photography. Nature wasn't helping as it was what we in the UK call 'sheet lightning' and not the more spectacular forked variety. All this did was light up the whole viewing area and so my photos just looked like the brightness was generated by the street lights. Only I will know that when it wasn't lit up by the lightning flashes, it was as dark as the insides of a Scotsman's wallet. I'm learning that a lot of photography is like that - only the photographer ever knows what it took to get the image.

Anyway, the best result is below and shows my point..........................

I'm glad the house has a porch as it was raining like crazy and I couldn't have gone outside without being protected by it's roof. As it was, I still felt the rain spray up on me from time to time and I called it a night, or more accurately a morning, after I saw the rain flares on the lens.

I'd really hoped some cars would've driven down the road while the shutter was open for the 60 seconds that it took to get this image as they would've created lines of colour from their tail lights, but it was 2am and this area is pretty dead by then.

I wanted to get this posted before going to bed but as usual the image was too large for upload purposes and I was too tired right then to mess with resizing it. I saved the text and have just now resized the photo and that's us up to date - 11:44am on Wed 4th.