wfooshee
O, Woe is me!!
A little over a month ago I took this shot of the bridge that carries U.S. 98 over the bay here. There are bridges all over the place around here, and indeed you can't get to Panama City Beach without crossing a bridge; the Intracoastal Waterway has made the beach area an actual large island. But if you say you're crossing the bridge to get to work, or the dentist, or school, it's said with capital letters, and this is the bridge they're talking about.
The picture was done with a 30-second exposure on a Saturday night so I'd have good traffic.
Last night we had a bit of weather. Not quite what they had over in Louisiana, and not even what they had just a hundred miles away in Pensacola. Nevertheless we had some lightning, really strong. gusty wind, and a lot of rain. When I finished supper I saw some flashes in the back window, so I packed up and headed for The Bridge. I've always wanted to get lightning pictures there. I hoped to get something like the above but catch some lightning as well.
When I got to my spot, same spot as I used for the picture above, the wind was blowing in the 30s, with stronger gusts. There was no way I could shoot for 30 seconds with the camera being shoved around by the wind, so I experimented with shutter times from 1 to 5 seconds, and settled on 2-1/2 as the best compromise between maybe having a wind blast ruin the shot, or having the shutter closed too much of the time and missing a lightning flash. I set the self-shooter thingie to rip the 2.5-second shutter every three seconds, and I let it run for an hour. I got a few shots of the sky lit up, but I only got ONE that had an actual lightning bolt in it. That one made the trip worthwhile, though!
I posted this image in the "What's the weather like where YOU are today?" thread last night, because..... well, it was what the weather was like last night where I am.
(By the way, notice that those power lines you see hanging in front of the bridge in this picture are not in the above picture. THAT..... was some tedious cloning and content-aware deleting!)
After posting that one all over the place I got to thinking..... "Ya know, I have the other picture, taken from the same place so the perspective is the same, and it's the long exposure I wanted to try for.... I wonder if I can lay it over the other one?"
So I did. I took the traffic-streak image and pasted it into a new layer over the lightning image, scaled it to match, and erased the sky and water from the traffic-streaks picture, except for that reflection of the bright light under the bridge.... I liked that reflection. So the road deck and traffic are from the first picture in this post, but the lamp posts on the bridge are actually the ones in the lightning picture, so the sky above the roadway will be correct for last night. I had to dim the light streaks just a little bit to match to light level of the lightning pic. Then I cropped it a bit because the light-streak picture didn't reach as far to the left.
I got the image I wanted!!!! Long-exposure of the traffic and a flash of lightning over the bridge. So what if I cheated and used Photoshop voodoo?
The picture was done with a 30-second exposure on a Saturday night so I'd have good traffic.
Last night we had a bit of weather. Not quite what they had over in Louisiana, and not even what they had just a hundred miles away in Pensacola. Nevertheless we had some lightning, really strong. gusty wind, and a lot of rain. When I finished supper I saw some flashes in the back window, so I packed up and headed for The Bridge. I've always wanted to get lightning pictures there. I hoped to get something like the above but catch some lightning as well.
When I got to my spot, same spot as I used for the picture above, the wind was blowing in the 30s, with stronger gusts. There was no way I could shoot for 30 seconds with the camera being shoved around by the wind, so I experimented with shutter times from 1 to 5 seconds, and settled on 2-1/2 as the best compromise between maybe having a wind blast ruin the shot, or having the shutter closed too much of the time and missing a lightning flash. I set the self-shooter thingie to rip the 2.5-second shutter every three seconds, and I let it run for an hour. I got a few shots of the sky lit up, but I only got ONE that had an actual lightning bolt in it. That one made the trip worthwhile, though!
I posted this image in the "What's the weather like where YOU are today?" thread last night, because..... well, it was what the weather was like last night where I am.
(By the way, notice that those power lines you see hanging in front of the bridge in this picture are not in the above picture. THAT..... was some tedious cloning and content-aware deleting!)
After posting that one all over the place I got to thinking..... "Ya know, I have the other picture, taken from the same place so the perspective is the same, and it's the long exposure I wanted to try for.... I wonder if I can lay it over the other one?"
So I did. I took the traffic-streak image and pasted it into a new layer over the lightning image, scaled it to match, and erased the sky and water from the traffic-streaks picture, except for that reflection of the bright light under the bridge.... I liked that reflection. So the road deck and traffic are from the first picture in this post, but the lamp posts on the bridge are actually the ones in the lightning picture, so the sky above the roadway will be correct for last night. I had to dim the light streaks just a little bit to match to light level of the lightning pic. Then I cropped it a bit because the light-streak picture didn't reach as far to the left.
I got the image I wanted!!!! Long-exposure of the traffic and a flash of lightning over the bridge. So what if I cheated and used Photoshop voodoo?
