Lightning

There was a fabulous lightning show the night before I left Los Alamos. It was simply amazing what was going on at one time. So I had to get out my camera. The pictures came out pretty good except they almost look like they were taken in day time. Most of my lightning shooting has been with dark backgrounds and I didn't account for the light of the city background. So I left it open for minutes at a time with a large aperture. Looking back, I should have used around f-11 or f-16 instead of f-4. I think that the lightning still would have come out fine and I could leave it open for the same time with less background exposure. The images here have been modified slightly in PhotoShop with varying results. I basically decreased the brightness and increased contrast, but by increasing contrast I lost some resolution and the normally fine gradients.