Last month I trekked up to a remote location in the Maine North Woods for a little getaway. It was just me and Mother Nature. I spent four nights away from cell phones and computers, “to do” lists, and traffic jams. I passed the time kayaking, observing wildlife, and reading. I watched the days pass by in slow motion and allowed my mind to achieve an inner calm.
Last night, sleeping in my bed back in Vermont, I was woken up by a passing lightning storm. As the rain pounded down and the thunder rumbled, I was reminded of my last night in the North Woods where I witnessed a spectacular storm blow in where my little cabin sat. Inspired by last night’s storm, I decided to share my images from that last evening in the North Woods.
The wind began to blow just after sunset. I had already eaten supper and crawled into my sleeping bag when a flash to the North caught my attention. As I lay there, gazing out the window I decided that if I saw another flash, I would haul myself out of bed and lug my camera to the front porch in an attempt to capture some lightning strikes. I have never successfully captured a lightning strike, so when I saw another bolt off in the distance, I made the decision to go.
A couple of minutes later I had my camera set up on a tripod and waited. The trick to capturing a lighting strike, I decided was to set my camera to long exposures of at least five seconds, and repeat the process. With luck, a bolt of lightning would jump across the sky as my camera was exposing. For the next hour I repeated this process of capturing exposures from five to thirty seconds. For the next hour a true darkness settled in over my little lake as the storm blew in. For the next hour, I was mesmerized as lightning strikes grew closer and thunder louder.
Below you will find the images of mine that best captured the storm, and at the end is a link to a youtube video of a timelapse of the storm as it closed in on my location. Enjoy.
Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon 24-70 f2.8 II, 55mm, ISO 200, f8, 5 to 30 second exposures
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