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Photoshop image stacking: tower lightning
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I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. This page is a detailed account of the biggest threat to my photography and video operation that I had to battle daily to just barely survive, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem facing all of my colleagues as well. |
Photo stacking is a feature in Photoshop that takes a sequence of images from a single scene and overlays them together, so that the elements appear as if they were shot in a single photo. I'm not a huge fan of excessive manipulation of images, though there is arguably nothing wrong with it as long as it is disclosed fully to the viewer/buyer. These ones came out looking interesting, so I'll make an exception. This is the result of stacking my tower lightning photos from Lexington, Kentucky back on February 5 and from St. Albans (WVAH site) from June 3. These results would have been impossible to pull off with the camera alone. In the case of Lexington, the exposure would have needed to be some 20 minutes long to get all of the strikes in one frame. That would have worked if there was no ambient urban light - but in this case, the glare from the city lights would have blown out the sky in a few minutes' time. Each of the Lexington exposures were around 30 to 45 seconds long. The WVAH tower shots were 1/40 second reaction exposures - long exposures would have been impossible in the full daylight.
Awesome shots! Photoshop rules!
- Posted by Clarence from Nashville, TN | |
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