Ocean Lightning by Andre Kleynhans

Lightning strike over the ocean near Key West, Florida ~ © Andre Kleynhans
Nikon D800 • Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens @ 24mm, f/3.2, 5 seconds, ISO 160

Andre Kleynhans of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, captured these two spectacular lightning images at night from the 12th deck of a cruise ship, sailing out of Key West, Florida.

Lightning strike over the ocean near Key West, Florida ~ © Andre Kleynhans (click to enlarge)
Nikon D800 • Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 lens @ 70mm, f/2.8, 5 seconds, ISO 200

Both images were cropped slightly to Andre's taste. In the top image, he was trying to get the reflection across the water; and in the bottom image his goal was to dramatically fill the frame as much as possible.

Technique: Andre used a five-second exposure time in order to capture as many single lightning strikes as possible. The camera was set to fire continuously, until he had obtained the captures he desired. By keeping the shutter speed to only 5-seconds, Andre hoped to eliminate second lightning strikes within the same frame.

"I am aiming to catch only one lighting strike per exposure. If you leave it open for longer and you do get another lightning strike in the same exposure your 2nd strike will throw off your image due to the fact that the ship is constantly moving, so it will look like you have two images on top of each other, but not aligned —and you could not fix that in post," cautions Andre.

During hurricane season, one can find a lot of thunderstorms in the Caribbean. "The strong winds are usually more prominent along the railing of ship, [but] if you just move a couple of feet back you can escape the most of it," advises Andre.

Challenges: Standing on the open deck of a cruise ship leaves one at the mercy of the elements.

"You have heavy winds, lots of movement and rain that can come out of no where, as it is very dark out in the middle of the ocean. As long as you have a sturdy tripod, and you are set up in such a way that if the rain catches you by surprise, you can pick up your gear and make a run for cover. Make sure you are focused to infinity and try to shoot a little wider than the active part of the cloud; this way you can catch all the action. You can always crop a little bit in post," says Andre.

Tools: A steady tripod was essential. "When I took this image I was standing on deck 12 of the ship (in the front). It is entirely exposed to the wind, so I had to make sure I place my tripod in [a way] to try to avoid as much of the wind as possible. Taking these types of shots at 5 seconds does give you a bit of room to play. A soon as the lightning hits, your image is exposed and you just pretty much wait for the shutter to close again. Its so dark out there in the ocean it actually makes it an easy environment to shoot lightning," says Andre.

Andre used Adobe Lightroom to do the minimal adjustments that he did to the images.

Satisfaction: This was the first lighting storm Andre was able to shoot since upgrading to the Nikon D800, and his expectations were very high. "When I saw that first exposure on the LCD I did a little dance, because I knew that I captured a winner. The satisfaction came when I zoomed in and checked that it was tack sharp. This made standing out there in the 85-degree heat of the Caribbean worth the effort."

Andre Kleynhans was born in Pretoria, South Africa. Andre lived in South Africa until he was 25. After that, he started working on cruise ships, and has been on them now for over six years (he is currently a PADI Instructor). Having the opportunity to see the world ignited his interest in photography.

Andre had always loved taking his dad’s camera from him and being the one taking the family pictures. His career on cruise ships gave him the opportunity to invest in his first camera. Andre learn pretty much everything he knows about photography through self-studying, and is a big supporter of a website called CreativeLive.

Today, Andre shoots with a Nikon D800. He loves landscape photography —anything from sunsets/sunrises, seascapes, the moon or stars —if he has a nice dark evening. He also enjoys doing panoramas, and finds it very interesting to cut up a scene with the camera and recreate it in post production. More of Andre's photography can be found on his website.

Into the Night with Ben Coffman

"Dust Lanes" - taken in the Alvord Desert of Oregon ~ © Ben Coffman

Ben Coffman moved to Portland, Oregon with his family about four years ago. Even though he bought his first DSLR in 2003, it wasn't until he relocated to Oregon that he "quit goofing around", got serious about his digital photography, and started shooting the night sky.

"Phone Booth Selfie" - The
pay phone booth is the last
of a dying breed. When cell
phones don't have service,
the booth is there to lend a
helping hand, no matter
the hour — "as long as I
had correct change, that is.
...Farewell old friend!"

Ben's biggest challenge in photographing Dust Lanes was the pure remoteness of the Oregon "outback" location, which is of particular concern when one is bringing his entire family, including young children, on a road trip with him. "New tires on the car, a filled 5-gallon jug of water, and plenty of gasoline helped to reassure me that I wasn't endangering us all," says Ben.

"I was also a little nervous about camping in the middle of the desert. The weather forecast suggested a chance of rain, and I've heard horror stories about campers getting stuck out in the middle of the playa when the hard-packed dirt turns to sticky mud."

On this particular night, the skies clouded over during the blue hour, so Ben put away his camera and set his alarm for 2:00 AM, just so he could wake up and check to see if the skies had cleared. At the planned hour, he was thrilled to see a fairly clear sky. The playa, which is mostly white, glowed in the starlight. "What I couldn't see with my naked eye was a thin layer of atmospheric moisture that produced a gauzy, dreamy look to the stars.  ...Rather than fighting it in post-processing, ... I thought the softness fit well with the surreal feel of the landscape," says Coffman.

This photo is two exposures: One for the sky and one for the ground. RAW processing for both exposures took place in Lightroom 5, with blending and other adjustments (local contrast, saturation, sharpening) occurring in Photoshop CS6.

Getting it Right: When I asked Ben about the satisfaction he finds in completing a shot like Dust Lanes, he whipped, "Any satisfaction I would have gained from completing this photo was overshadowed by the amount of frustration involved in finally getting it right! This was actually my fourth full attempt at post-processing it — I have three other "finished" versions of this photo that will never see the light of day because I wasn't quite happy with the final result."

Dust Lanes is part of a larger series Coffman is working on this year, in which he is trying to capture more detailed versions of the night sky than what he had previously captured in his landscape astrophotography. He is trying to illustrate via his techniques that there's more beauty to the night sky than meets the naked eye. He is also trying to raise awareness for the conservation of our night skies (e.g., reducing light pollution via responsible lighting methods).

Ben Coffman shoots with a Canon camera and an assortment of manual lenses. When he is not shooting or "looking at the photos of one of the many, many talented photographers that live in this area", he enjoys coffee, training Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and hanging out with his family, but not necessarily in that order. More of Ben's photography can be found at his website.

Using HDR with NightScape Exposures

A "false" HDR exposure of the Milky Way stars reflecting in Oxbox Bend, Grand Teton N.P. ~ © Royce Bair
(Canon 5D Mark III, Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 @ f/2.0, 13 seconds, ISO 6400)

Exposure for sky

When doing my "NightScape" style of starry night landscape photography, I will often do a much longer second exposure (often at 4X longer) and blend the foreground portion with the original "sky" exposure. This enables me to give more detail to mountains, trees, and water features —otherwise, they are are usually just a silhouette against the night sky (like the image to the right).

Second Exposure Problems: Making a longer exposure second exposure is very time consuming because I usually turn on the camera's "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" feature which also takes a "black" exposure for the same amount of time, compares the two images, and cancels out the hot/noisy pixels in your final image. I gladly take this additional time for the increase in quality; however, images with water will also reflect cloud changes (between the exposures) and star movement in the longer, second exposure. Water automatically magnifies the brightest stars and diminishes the lesser stars. It also has a tendency to make each bright star produce a "long" reflection —similar to the way a rising moon reflects on the water. My longer (4X) second exposure greatly exaggerated those lengthy star reflections, causing them to look weird and out of character. To avoid this, and still get better foreground detail I turned to False HDR: False High Dynamic Range Imaging (sometimes called Fake HDR).

Standard HDR vs. False HDR: In regular HDR imaging, one takes at least three exposures: one at the normal exposure value, one at a +1.0 EV (or higher), and one at a -1.0 EV (or lower). These three images are blended, "fused", or tone-mapped together using HDR software, i.e. Photomatix —with the final image extending the dynamic range of the scene.

In False HDR, one manipulates the original exposure to obtain the other two exposure values. This is best accomplished using the Adobe Camera Raw Converter.

In the Adobe Camera Raw Converter, use the "Exposure" slider to obtain your 3 Exposure Values

Save one image at the neutral or "0.00" EV. Save the second image at the "+1.00" EV, and the
third image at the "-1.00" EV (16-bit RAW images can be converted to EV's up to +/- 2.00 stops).

Here are my three converted images: Normal exposure, +1.00 EV, and -1.00 EV.
These are saved as 16-bit TIF files.

HDR Processing: The above three exposure values were save as 16-bit TIF files and imported into Photomatix for HDR processing. I typically output a "Natural Fusion" image that just blends the three images and extends the dynamic range of the scene. I then output a tone-mapped version that gives additional local contrast, texture, and shadow detail. The Natural Fusion and tone-mapped versions are then blended using Photoshop's Adjustment Layers, varying the opacity of each layer to taste. Additional contrast is then applied to the final image via an S-curve to bring out the latent colors in the sky.