Lightning is scary and yet a gorgeous part of the natural beauty. We find watching lightening mesmerizing and we have all enjoyed photos of lightning, so many bolts captured with just one photo sometimes does not seem possible. But as you read on you will see that it is possible. Not only is it possible, it is also possible for you to do with a little practice and patience.

Catching lightning in a photo is difficult due to its unpredictability and trying to capture the split second on film. What we can do is let the lightning do the work for us. We do not need to catch every bolt of lightning, and using the proper techniques we will capture something beautifully unique. It just takes some practice and technical know how to get the results that you are looking for while taking lightning photographs.

By using a film at slow speed, or an ISO for digital cameras, long exposure time, and small aperture we can capture the lightning by using it as a source of light. You can set the exposure from many seconds to as little as 1 second; it all depends on the lightning and whether we are working in the dark or in the daylight.  The lighting conditions are still diminished during a storm in the daylight hours by at least 7 stops and sometimes more than sunny conditions.

The best thing is to have our spot all picked out before the storm happens. It can be any type of subject matter we desire… A good idea is to choose a spot before a storm so you already have plans on where to go and get set up. Finding the right spot to shoot is just as important as the subject you choose to shoot. Shooting lightning gives you a variety of choices and it is fun to try to shoot different subjects during a storm.

If you are setting up your camera outdoors it is best to use your tripod with something extra to help hold it in place in the instance there is high winds that we can’t control. You will want a cover for your camera that is also waterproof to protect it from the elements. You should employ the use of an air bulb release for the camera because there is no metal in the tubing; this will protect you in case of a lightning strike to the camera, you must always think of your own safety when setting up for this type of photo. Set your camera at f/16 and the (B) setting for the shutter. Set your lens to infinity or a focal point off in the distance. Now that the camera is set up you should take cover in a place where you plan on tripping the shutter to shoot your photos.

Camera: Sony DSLR-A200 Exposure: 10 sec (10) Aperture: f/4 Focal Length: 20 mm ISO Speed: 100 Exposure Bias: 0/10 EV. Photo by stevoarnold, Flickr

If you do not choose to set up outside you can use the assistance of a window-pod and attach it to your car window or even take the pictures from an indoor location. If you choose to take a picture from indoors, you will want to make sure all of your interior lights are off. If your taking the photo from inside your car, be sure to keep the windows up so the camera is protected at all times from the elements.

Taking the photo is merely keeping the shutter open long enough to catch a few bolts of lightning. To manage this the right way, we should be taking several shots because we can’t measure the exposure caused by lightning. This will easily take a full roll of film, but if you are in luck and have a digital camera you are ahead of the game. You will find that you have many great pictures and some awesome effects from the lightning. We can not finish a section about filming lightning without mentioning that it is very dangerous. There are thousands of volts in a single bolt that would make our electric companies green with envy. Even those that are electrocuted as a form of punishment do not receive the same voltage as 1 bolt of lightning.

You should always protect yourself when out in a storm and you should seek the shelter of a building or inside your vehicle. The task is to be sure you are grounded and not touching the ground yourself. The lightning is attracted to tall objects and it is not always safe to stand under a tree. You may want to take a great picture, but safety comes first.

A precursor to the eminent strike of lightning is if you suddenly feel the hair on your neck stand up on ends. Get away from that area immediately if you begin to feel this and you are outdoors. Always wear protective clothes like rubber boots, coat and hat, it is not a guarantee to your safety but it does help.  Always stay away from tall objects outdoors as they are a conduit to the electrical charge and you can be zapped just for being near the object, not to forget, you do not need a tree falling on top of you!

• Selecting a camera – with lightning photography it is recommended you use a digital camera to cut the cost of film, but any camera that has a bulb will do fine. The digital camera will save you money in the long run because you can expect to have many photos on a roll that you will see are not useable.
• Selecting the Lens - Usually the wide angle lens is a better choice when catching lightning. You can get much more sky into the photo and that offers a better chance of catching lightning. The lens choice depends on what you’re shooting so be prepared.
• Tripod - You should get a tripod that can stand up to the weather conditions. It is a good investment if you plan on doing this type of photography. It does not have to be the most expensive on the market, just a good tripod that can stand up to the conditions is enough.
• Noise reduction - If you are the owner of a Canon EOS 400D or the EOS 30D you should keep the noise reduction turned off. If you leave it on and you increased the exposure time, you will have to wait longer to take the next picture and that could mean a loss of great photo ops.
• Settings of ISO – You should set to the lowest speed. This will give you a clear picture and you are using the tripod anyhow.
• Timer and Mirror Lockup - You should enable the timer on your camera if you’re using the cable release. If you want to minimize movement you should enable your mirror lockup.
• RAW - Use this setting because the editing is much easier so you can develop your photo with different balances of white. Capturing the different balances of white can really change the look of your photos.
• Aperture - You should keep the aperture value between f/5.6 and f/8 this will allow you to capture more than one bolt at a time due to the longer exposure time of your camera. An aperture that is faster than f/5.6 may be over done and an aperture of f/11 or smaller might not get you the result you’re looking for.
• Exposure - If shooting during the daylight hours let the cameras inner light meter fix the right exposure, if at night use the tips to find the right exposure.

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All of my recent themes have been page-based, so I thought it was time I release a more traditional blog template. I hope this dark and “interfacey” design will be a welcomed addition the the ElegantThemes collection.

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12 Incredibly useful and handy HDR ready-to-use Photoshop actions for instantly improved photo effects. Fix dull, lifeless and dark photos in seconds! As you can see from the preview file, some actions give higher contrast HDR effect (designed for particularly dark photos), others add an artistic touch such as outline, noise here is a brief overview of what’s included in your download:

• Action 1 – Mild HDR effect, fix shadows and dark areas, enhances colors
• Action 2 – Classical, intense HDR effect
• Action 3 – Moderately mild HDR effect with sepia colors scheme.
• Action 4 – Very mild HDR effect, fixes shadows and unlit areas, adds artistic light noise.
• Action 5 – Very intense HDR with extreme colors enhancement, designed to fix extremely dark and colorless shots.
• Action 6 – High contrast B/W HDR with mild glow / blur effect
• Action 7 – Colorful HDR with semi-visible noise (less visible noice and more colors, compared to action 4)
• Action 8 – Highly artistic HDR with dark outline and vertical strokes.
• Action 9 – Highly artistic HDR with overall dark blue scheme and emphasis on light areas. Fixes shadows enhances colors.
• Action 10 – Vintage-HDR. Add stains and spots to your HDR effect, get artistic and very beautiful result.
• Action 11 – Intense HDR , and very visible glow / blur effect
• Action 12 – HDR + Noise + light sepia + even shadows, last action is once again classed as a more of an art-HDR, makes the tones even adds a vintage-style color

After you have successfully loaded the actions, just play around and enjoy! All the 12 actions are stored in 1 folder called “HDR pro”, click the arrow to collapse the menu with all the actions.

I am also enclosing 2 sets of examples, based on photos I took myself, together with the original images (unprocessed). Feel free to use them as a base or use them anywhere else, crediting me is You will notice that, just like any HDR photo effect, it works best for dark, dull and lifeless photos, particularly – landscapes, however, I tried them out also on portraits and other photos – in any way the result is incredibly impressive.

If you have any questions, please drop me a line.

Download Now!

This tutorial inspired by all the sci-fi movies where radiation glowing circles are pictured in great details; so we are going to make very vibrant, glossy and realistically curved text effect with extremely beautiful and original glow circles, that no other text effect has. We will be working with a lot of Contour settings, so this tutorial is for more advanced users.

So, let’s get started. Create a new canvas, we are using 600 x 370 pixels here.

Fill it with any background color and for best effect, fill it with background texture. Simply double click the background in Layers Panel, and Layer Style’s menu will pop up. Go to Pattern Overlay mode and fill with, preferably floral, pattern. Here we used Damask pattern which unfortunately isn’t available for a download by the author anymore, but you can get more free textures here.

When you are done, select the typing tool and type your word in the middle, with very big and gold letters. Should you decide to use a narrow or small font, the effect simple won’t be visible. We used the GEronto Bis font, 236 pt size, exactly as you see on the canvas below:

Now the magic will begin. Double click the layer with the letters, and start applying the layer styles as you see below. First, make a small shadow with Gaussian Contour.

Add inner shadow with dark gray hue (we used #4f4f4f) and for contour we available of another pre-installed curve called “Half Rounded”. If you are using Photoshop CS2 + version, you should find it among your default curves.

Add outer glow with a color that will complement your background, in our case we had blue damask texture as our background and chose the #3c447a blue hue as Outer Color.

For the Contour here, we used Ring – Double. This will also come pre-installed to your Photoshop. Please note that every setting in this tutorial makes use of different Contour curve, which makes our effect particular interesting and the effect stands out. This Double Ring is exactly what gives the nice radiation / explosion glowing rounds wrapping the text.

Inner glow with #ffffff white color, and once again Gaussian Contour.

Bevel and Emboss will give our text the depth it needs. Use the default Ring contour to get the best metallic / plastic look effect.

For contour, use the “Wow-sharp highlight” Contour element.

We also want to give more deep and extreme Satin effect but this time, since we found no contour that suited our needs, we created our own curve…

To get exactly the same results as we have here, please copy our mapping to your Contour Editor.

Finally add stroke to your text, with a lighter hue of blue that will complement your background. Please do not use white or black as these colors will look too contrasted with background.

This is what you have got so far:

white to transperant gradient

Finally, load a selection of for the upper part of the text . If you do not know how to do it, read on:

• Create a new layer on top of the text, and then hold down Ctrl and click on the layer in the layer’s panel, in order  to select it.
• Using the Gradient Tool Now that goes from #ffffff to transparency.
• draw a gradient from the beginning of the selection on top, down to it’s bottom.
• Using the Elliptical Tool, draw a selection from the middle of the text to the bottom, and press Delete, to leave just the little gradient on top of the letters.
• This will do the gradually-glossy topping effect.

Done! Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and please feel free to download the PSD file of this effect, the file is of 600*370 size, same as you see here.

When the older generation were young, and needed to create a school design or anything that involved cropping letters, we often cropped them first from an old newsprint, before proceeding to work with a colored paper. So this is pretty much what I wanted to create here — a newspapers cropped draft!

Let’s begin with making a new canvas and fill it with any solid color, our choice was #2b362b:

To give it a bit of depth, while the background is still selected, go to Layer Styles (Layer >> Layer Style >> Gradient Overlay) and apply the following settings.. This will give a lighter spot in the middle of the canvas that normally gives nice depth.

Now, find online or scan any newspaper pager. We couldn’t find one big sheet so we combined ours from a several ads in the local newspaper. Place the newspaper on the canvas.

Using a huge Cooper Black font, type your word on top of the newspapers layer. If you are using a different font, however, be sure to work with BOLD letters because the whole effect is based on the boldness of the typography.

Now it’s a little bit tricky for those of you who are still beginners, so please pay attention..

1. While the typed letters are still selected, hold the CTRL key and press on the layer with the word “News” in the layers panel, this will load a selection around your letters.
2. Go to Selection >> Modify >> Expand, and expand the selection by about 3-4 pixels. If your font is too narrow, you might want to use a bigger number.
3. Press Shift + Ctrl + I, to reverse the selection.
4. Press Delete.

You are now left with 2 layers, cropped from newspapers letters and the typed letters layer, which you can now delete. (or hide, but you certainly not going to need it anymore!).

This is what you have left:

Using the Lasso Marquee Tool, crop each letter individually, and once selected, press Ctrl + T to start transforming. Align them in any fashion you want, but do not overdo this effect if you don’t want to end up with  a messed up canvas..