Photographic memories
THIS crazy lightning capture was taken on June 16 last year by an amateur photographer who set himself the challenge of taking a standout image every day for the past year.
The lightning photo, taken from Mark Humpage’s back garden in Cotesbach is, he said, his favourite from a fulfilling selection taken over the past 365 days.
“Boy, what a year,” said Mark, 56. “For me, keeping busy has been the key to getting through the year and in this respect I have focused on photography.
“I decided to create a gallery commencing on March 23, 2020, focused entirely on capturing life from my Leicestershire home during lockdown – 365 days of images.
“That’s quite a challenge and I must admit how impressed I have been with the variety and sometimes stunning outcome of my results.
“If you were to push me and ask which is my overall favourite image it would have to be the lightning photo.
“This was such a crazy wild weather day in Leicestershire, when lightning exploded above my head and home for hours.
“I sat in my bedroom with camera on tripod and captured the entire show. I was buzzing for days afterwards.”
Mark, who works for Highways England, keeping the motorways and trunk roads moving, said photography is his “get away from it all” place.
“I have been busy with the camera since digital cameras landed back in the late 90s, which is when I set up my own website.
“I specialise in natural elemental photography, on land and water, have travelled a fair bit – in the good old days.”
For the more technically minded, this is how Mark captured the lightning photo:
“I set up my camera on a tripod in my bedroom (on covered balcony) overlooking my garden/field.
“A lightning trigger device was connected to the camera.
“The trigger sits on the camera hot shoe and detects electrical activity in the air and automatically captures lightning – a very useful gadget, especially for daytime lightning, which is almost impossible to capture normally.
“The camera was taking images from 7pm through to 9pm as the intense storm passed over, just to the went through each one individually each other. The resulting image is a north of me. to select those with bolts. Most of the two-hour composite of all the light-
“I set the shooting mode to images had picked up the cloud ning bolts captured between 7pm sequential high and used the mains flashes and hence triggered the and 9pm. power adapter. The camera was taking camera. It is the bolts or forks that I “A mind-blowing shot, really, as it a huge volume of shots during was interested in for the shot. is extremely difficult to capture daytime peak activity. “I ended up with 80 images that lightning. So, my tip – buy a
“At the end of the two-hour period captured bolts of lightning. I took lightning trigger. the camera had snapped just under these 80 and stacked them together “The pink colour in the image is 1,000 images. using software (StarStax) which caused by different particles in the
“I then transferred all to MAC and effectively layered them all on top of air scattering light. Elements such as nitrogen and oxygen can cause the lightning flash to look different colours such as pink, purple, blue. Dust and pollution contribute to this. White lightning means the bolt is nearer and in clearer air.”
We’ll be running more of Mark’s pictures in the Mercury next week, but if you can’t wait until then, you can view more of his work at: