Can you believe that in all these years of following my passion (photography) I have never once tried to photograph lightning…?  Unbelievable I know.  As mentioned we spent some quality family time in the Drakensberg this Christmas and we happened to be up on the tops of this mountain range.  So we were able to witness a lighting storm which was actually really far away.  Being at almost the same height as the clouds so

to speak we were able to witness (and photograph) the spectacular lighting bolts shooting from the sky without being in any real danger.  This is where a digital camera came in handy.  You can take as many photos as you like and review them quickly and easily so that you can then adjust your settings.  What I did was to close the aperture slightly (changing from anything from f8 up to f11)  and then I did long exposures like 10

seconds, 15 seconds, and 20 seconds.  It literally is anyones guess as to what settings to use when photographing lightning as every lightning bolt is different and so is your exposure.  I have to admit this was really fun to do and it took a lot of guess work to figure out the exposure but was worth it in the end!

Riani