Advertisement
I had plans to wake up really early and go visit the Grand Palace. But a little bit after midnight a heavy storm woke me up with loud thunders. I jumped out of the bed. Something clicked in my head. Lately we have been amazed at a few lightning shots we had seen in magazines.
As a photographer I have always been passionate for well-captured lightning images. Not only they are a fun challenge because of the technicallity but because lightning photography is not produced by an ideal situation that you can plan or stage ahead of time. You must have to get be fast grab your camera and shoot while the storm is happening eventhough there are plenty of chances to miss the shot.
I was asleep when I heard the storm. I jumped out of my bed in a second. I haven’t quite unpacked yet. With my eyes still lazy I threw half of the contents of my luggage on the floor quickly to get to my tripod, which was stowed, all the way at the bottom and I didn't think I was going to use it so soon. As I am putting the camera on the
tripod and opened the blinds I saw the biggest lighting I have ever seen going down next to a building close by. I thought to myself. There it goes: That was it!. I just missed the shot. But I was already up and with the gear almost ready …I decided to give it a go anyway and try. You only get better after the first time, I always say. I tried different settings until I got to these that worked pretty good: Tripod and manual focus at infinity or pre-focus pretty far in the distance. I chose one of the further buildings that had a red light. Then I didn't have a remote to set the camera at bulb so I programmed the self-timer to 30" and aperture to 5.6. It worked great for a first timer. I pre-focused first then composed to have an interesting foreground. The only thing I had to play with was the park and the street in front of it that looked wet from my window so I went for that. Then I took several series of 9 shots every 45 seconds and I was hoping to get lucky. I discarded about 5 or 6
test shots and kept all 139 shots I took in secuence of the storm with out changing a thing. I got 4 shots of the lighting and a bunch of images that played as a time-lapse give the viewer a really good feeling of the movement of the storm. I pretty happy with the results and I am looking forward to more storms and experiment some more with settings.
I uploaded the best shot I got and then went to bed. My alarm sounded a couple of hours after and it was still raining. So I decided to sleep two more hours knowing that I had to move my Temple day for next weekend…no way I was going to be able to see that side of town in a shortened day.
When I got up it was extremely hot and I decided to spend a little bit of time putting together the series of images from the night before in a Time-lapse. The go-pro app didn’t open the files from my slr…will have to play with that again or maybe I am using the wrong app. I had to do it in Adobe but
I shot portrait and I couldn’t turn all the images around automatically so I had to do one by one. And also Adobe fits the image to a certain size so I had to scale it to original…again one by one. I missed one and you will see it in the video…or maybe you wont notice but I did (I only saw it after I uploaded to youtube and will not change it). Eventhough putting all the images in secuence and playing them together is a simple process. I took me forever to turn them around one by one, then fit them to original size and then stretch the time to 0.20 sec each, again one by one. The result is a short video that Im posting here but really when you see those 2:01 min video you never realize how much work it is involved. I really have to figure out better software to do that kind of stuff if I want to continue shooting time lapse….maybe I will just try my go pro and see how it goes. Too see the Time-lapse video click here:
and went to walk Silom Road. I was told it is a very popular area just nearby. I wasn’t really impressed and must of the stores where closed on Sunday and it was somehow slow except for a few vendors in the street. Lunch time was way overdue and I wanted to eat something yummy. Must of the street food places sell deep fried food or wok food and I was not ready to put that amount of fat in my belly. Then I saw a grill food stand. There was a squid on a stick. Of course I went for it. 60 bahts (2 dollars) and it was delish. He grilled it til it was crunchy, almost Turkish style and then he cut it up put it in a plastic baggie poored red pepper sauce on it and some sort of liquid. It wasn’t any sauce I know. It was pretty good. I walked ways down Silom Road and when it splits from the sky-train BTS it starts dying out even more. I decided to turn around and go to the park. I knew that just around 4pm when it starts to cool down it is the time to
go there. On my way back and before the park I turned left on Rama IV road and found a super delish place to eat. It was a street place but it had little cute tables and a menu in English with lots of variety. I ordered the duck salad but unfortunately they were out of duck so I replaced it with a papaya mango salad and it was out of this world. The ladies let me take some photos making the salad and then I moved on to have some cappuccino in the street. I was looking for an alternative to starbucks but I wasn’t impressed.
Then I went across to the park and I walked the opposite side that I walked yesterday. I found the lake, lots of outdoors gyms with machinery and weights for people to use, a lake with bycicle swans that you can rent and peddle around. I was taking pictures when I almost stepped on a huge lizard. Both of us were scared of each other. It went back to the water and could only get a pol shot. My camera was almost out of battery after a few days without re-charging and
I decided to head back home and finish the day at the roof top pool. I got a couple of yogurts for dinner at the 7-11 in the corner and headed up stairs with my tripod and camera ready to wait for the sunset while relaxing in the water. All I needed was a glass of wine. The rooftop is a super neat spot and I think I will be hanging there a lot. I relaxed and floated around for a while until the city started to show some night-lights. I went around and took some shots of my view from the top. It is pretty awesome. I can spend some time there trying to catch the moving sky train and the cars on the street but I have a big day tomorrow. It’s my first day of school so I called it a day.
If I have time I will upload the track of my walk. I know my dad loves seeing maps and where I have been!! Dad are you catching up?
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
The right lighting
I can picture you stumbling around in the dark trying to find your camera before you miss the shot. Glad you are having a great time.