Tuesday's excessive heat resulted in much lightning late that night. Sleep was being its elusive self yet again, so I wandered about the house munching arrowroot cookies and observing the lightning from several vantage points: my den window, front porch, bedroom window, and patio doors.
I tried a photo from the bedroom window, but the screens were a problem because the phone wanted to focus on the screening rather than the light show. I wasn't about to start removing the screens with Sue sleeping just a few feet behind me, so I took the phone to the patio door downstairs.
I didn't go out but just opened the door a tad on a hot night and took a few photos. It was sheet lightning, so it just lit up the sky generally as in the following image. Both before and after the lightning flash the sky was almost black.
The lightning will show up much better in the clip, below. The show went on and on like this for a considerable time.
(You know that you can embiggen the video, right? Just click the middle icon of the three on the bottom right.)
The phone is amazing. It tells me to hold the phone steady for up to 10 seconds for night exposures, but it still keeps the image pretty sharp. I tried another app, for long exposures just to see how it would work, but it picked up unintentional camera movement because you can't hold a phone steady for 15 seconds, and its algorithm does not compensate for that. When I saw what was happening, I moved the phone even more, deliberately, and this ↓ is the fun result.
The power did go out but not for long. On our morning walk, I took a photo of our smoke-diminished sun. This happens every summer now, but I don't remember it too much in the first of our two decades here.
Meanwhile, we’ve probably all see stunning photos in our online haunts.
Well the lightening is causing most of the fires across North America, so we can't blame you Canadians for all the smoke. Here is foggy this morning, and I hope it will clear as the sun brings us to 90 degrees later on. I've a lot of moon photos that have the jiggle effect!
ReplyDeleteI should try that deliberately sometime.
DeleteThat storm was pretty impressive. We've been forecast one, but it will probably pass us by as usual.
ReplyDeleteNothing beats wandering around the house with arrowroot cookies during a late-night storm, it sounds like the perfect way to pass a sleepless night. Your deliberate camera-shaking experiment turned out so cool, it looks like abstract neon art instead of a failed photo. It is wild how smart phone cameras are now, though avoiding waking up Sue by staying downstairs was definitely a wise move. The photo of the smoke-dimmed sun is incredibly beautiful yet really sobering, it is crazy how common those smoky summer skies have become over the last few years. How has your week been?
ReplyDeleteWe're in the hazardous (and more) levels on the Air Quality index. The sky at the lake was yellow. I'd already left but my cousins took off after that. Smells smoky here.
ReplyDeleteMy cousins in the US, as far away as Laramie Wyoming, are feeling the effects too. It blows in and here in the Ottawa Valley.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember smoky days like this until the last few years. Climate change.
ReplyDelete