1.21 gigawatts

(I wish I could hide this photo until after you finished reading.)

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Great Scott!! Who would have thought that I could capture another lightning image so soon?! I did this one the same as the other lightning pic, except that these exposures were much shorter. This is the image I had been hoping for all along... one bold streak of lightning, not the thin fingers like the ones in yesterday's post. Believe me, I hightailed it out of there as soon as I got this shot. Two minutes after this, I was driving in strong winds, blinding rain and even hail. Before I reached home, the sky was green, so I went for shelter. The temperature itself dropped to a comfortable level, which is nice, because I don't care for hot and muggy.

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After the rain, we got a beautiful sunset and a rainbow. I need to clean out my camera, because I let debris inside while changing lenses.

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Okay, now you may go back and look at the picture. ;-)

itching for a good light show

Monday night I went to bed at a decent hour. There was a spectacular lightning show going on outside. All I could think about was photography; I was itching to catch me some lightnin'! Feeling über restless, I asked myself, "What the heck am I doing in bed?!!" So I jumped out of the sack, hobbled downstairs, and set up the tripod outside the front door.

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There was no rain. Just frequent, muffled bursts of lightning. I set the program to "bulb" and held the shutter open for 20 or 30 seconds at a time. My camera takes a really long time to record those images... I wonder why.

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I tried over and over and over again. The lightning mostly showed itself as a diffused brightness in a patch of clouds. I wanted to see proper lightning bolts, not radiated light. The whole time, I felt pesky mosquitoes all around me. I experimented a little with infrared, but the ISO was too low to catch anything.

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Finally, I decided that the frequency had subsided enough, that I should call it a night and get back to bed. I woke my wife up to show here one shot (not this one) that I caught, but I didn't post it here, because it was blurry.

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I wasn't in bed five minutes before itchiness drove me to the brink of insanity. I HAD to get up again!! We have this little tube of stuff to put on mosquito bites, and it has ammonia, so it smells nasty. They got me real good on my calves, feet, and even toes!! (Shhhh... Don't tell anybody, but I have bare feet under my desk today.)

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I'm still itching from being a human sacrifice on Monday night, but it was totally worth it! They say we can expect large hail and strong winds tonight. This time, I'll stay inside, if you don't mind.

lightnin'

Twenty years ago, I practiced archery somewhat seriously. Though I never hunted, I spent lots of hours at archery ranges killing paper, tuning my bow, honing my skills. (Ewww... does that sound like Napoleon Dynamite??) The camp staff offered archery this weekend and both of my sons had a good time on the field. In this set, all the arrows landed in the gold. I think it was the best we saw that on that particular day. I have another photo with his partner, but here we're focusing on Levi (S1).

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What I like about the photo is that it says we show our loved ones in the best possible light. Are these shots representative of how he always does? Not necessarily, but it's how I present him, because I want to build him up and influence others to think the best of him.

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And now, did you know that the pros I used to shoot with gave me a nickname? They used to call me Lightnin'... something 'bout how lightnin' don't strike the same spot twice.

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Psalm 127:4 says, "Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth." For me, it is simpler to hit the little yellow spot on a piece of paper than to rightly "aim" my children. The idea is that we can compare a warrior's arrows and a parent's children in that they both are designed to have an impact to a place beyond our reach. We spend years straightening out the bends and discerning where to point them, so that when the time comes to release them, we hold our breath and watch them fly.