In Camera...Lightning and the Queen Mary 2

Waiting for the Queen Mary 2,  lightning flashes over Wales.

Last Friday evening the Queen Mary 2 was due to sail past the Iron Men on Crosby beach around 22.45 and I went down in the hope that I might capture an image even though it was cloudy and quite a dark night compared to earlier in the week.
Whilst waiting for the Queen Mary 2 to approach the first flashes of lightning lit up the sky over the distant hills of Wales.

The Queen Mary passing the Iron Men on Crosby beach

 I tried two different approaches to capturing an image of a reasonably fast moving ship in these dark conditions. A first exposure using fill in flash to highlight the foreground meant I could use a shorter exposure to capture the image of the Queen Mary 2 quite sharply. A second exposure without flash and upping the sensitivity of the sensor produced the result below.

After the Queen Mary 2 had sailed past towards her berth at the Liverpool Cruise Terminal the lightning show started in earnest, with flashes all around the sky.

The best way of capturing lightning flashes like this is to stop down and use a long exposure time in the hope that a flash will occur in the area that you are aiming at whilst the shutter is open. The speed of the  lightning flash is such that it appears very sharp on the image. These images were exposed for a length of 20 seconds.

A sky full of electrical energy lights up the distant wind farm 

The flash of lightning during the capture of this image was out of shot but so bright that it froze the moving water sharply, even during a twenty second exposure.

No lightning in this exposure but a curtain of rain was sweeping in blotting out all the details on the horizon. In this long exposure the sea becomes a smooth surface.