It just hit me the other day how far behind I am on Picture of the Week because of the break I took for Picture Me, Loving You! Crazy! Just know that I haven’t totally lost my mind when Fall rolls around, and I’m posting pictures of Spring flowers. 🙂
ANYWAY, I’ve spoken more than once about always having a plan B, and being willing to go with it. This picture was another such example. My friend Steve and I took off to Cades Cove one evening in hopes of catching a good sunset, and perhaps some star photos. Despite the weatherman saying we could get some rain, we were optimistic as usual (I mean, they’re wrong more than they’re right… right?). As we got closer to the Cove, the clouds got thicker, and once inside the Cove, it became evident there were going to be no star photos that night.
My other agenda was a hope to capture images of fireflies. I took this image a few years ago, and LOVE it, and wanted to get more of the same. Well, as Steve and I arrived at “the tree” (yes, my favorite tree… everyone’s favorite tree), it also became evident that there were going to be no sunset pictures that night either. By this time the thunder was rolling, lightning was flashing, and the rain had begun to sprinkle. The lightning bugs were out though, so we had that going for us.
Undeterred by the weather, we donned rain jackets for our camera gear and walked out into the field (yes, one of the things you’re NOT supposed to do in an electrical storm)… picked our shot, let the cameras roll, and then quickly retreated back to the truck, out of the rain. Once the evening had turned to pitch black and the lightning storm had simply turned into a downpour, we ran back out and grabbed our gear, only to retreat again to the truck. After it was all said and done, I decided to stack the images (using a similar method to what I describe in my star trail tutorial), and this is what I got. LOTS of lightning bugs, and two lightning strikes. Pretty cool!
Once again I was reminded of what an old farmer in Iceland told me, when I was considering not driving out to try to find some seals because the weather was bad and the season was wrong… he said “You’ve come all this way, so you must try.”
–Dan Thompson