After many months of the land baking in extreme heat, the land being parched of all it’s moisture – every plant and animal is pushed to i…
After many months of the land baking in extreme heat, the land being parched of all it’s moisture – every plant and animal is pushed to it’s limits of existance in this volatile climatic region.But like all seasons, they slowly change and the first showers and storms begin to form – isolated and somewhat benign in nature at first. Though this soon changes as the build up season gets into full swing and the heat and humidity is at it’s peak. The thunderstorms become more frequent and sometimes more violent and often dumping very heavy rainfall in short periods with cooler refreshing outflow winds temporarily providing relief from the stiffling heat and humidity…though once the storm clears and the sun returns the added moisture at ground levels sends the humidity skyrocketing again. / Wetlands begin to become rejuvinated remarkebly quickly again as all plants and animals look to make the most of this high speed growing and breeding season before the dry returns. Before it does though is the all mighty wet season with daily downpours, winds and little sunshine… This leaves the vast wetlands of the top end once again in full splendour of the annual floods. Access becomes very limited but what a majestic sight it is. This dramatic climate dries as quickly as it explodes and once again the top end will experience many months of cloudless skies as the cycle continues. take a glance at my relevant photograph that inspired me writing this piece… / http://www.redbubble.com/mybubble/works/edit_image/22722
What a lovely way to come home from a day out and about. Thankyou to to the buyer of “Summer Spectacular.” I hope it meets all your e…
What a lovely way to come home from a day out and about. Thankyou to to the buyer of “Summer Spectacular.” I hope it meets all your expectations and will bring you years of viewing pleasure. :-) Thankyou to the staff of RedBubble who have done such an excellent job with this site. You guys and gals rock!!!
I was wondering whether anyone else, cant wait for Summer to arrive(in Aus). / I’m hoping the Storm Season this year yields some Great Ph…
I was wondering whether anyone else, cant wait for Summer to arrive(in Aus). / I’m hoping the Storm Season this year yields some Great Photos. I love a Summer thunderstorm, I hope i’m not alone. It’s hot today, it must be 40’+ and the air is so thick you can feel it when you walk, / Its so humid you get wet standing still. / There’s no wind to speak of, and you see billowing ,white, cumulus clouds on the horizon. The heat seems to intensify, the clouds have now grown to be Cumulo-Nimbus, and are considerably closer, / The cloud base has grown dark and ominous. A faint bolt arcs to the ground, / and some seconds later, a barely audible rumble is heard. The clouds are close now, they fill the entire veiwfinder on your camera. The heat is still oppressive, but now something is different…. a breeze, barely noticeable at first, comes from the direction of the storm …...touches your sweaty face and instantly cools it. But all heat is forgotten, as a smell you have come to love reaches you…..... Rain! Another Bolt!.... not far off… the thunder is only a few seconds in following. Its quiet at first…. but rolls into a ground shaking rumble ,and then slowly dies away. Quiet again…. the only noise now is a car alarm, in the distance, sounding out its protest to the storm. / The skies have darkened considerably… you check your settings on the camera, hoping to time the next strike. But, at that moment… large droplets start to hit the ground….the breeze has gone…. a droplet strikes your face…it stings, but you dont care. For a while you forget everything. / Allowing yourself to be swept up in the moment . the smell is overpowering now, as all the dust is disturbed by the falling rain. / The temperature has dropped by 10’ as the rain increases. Suddenly you remeber your expensive equipment, slowly drowning. / The moment is lost. / As you run with your gear to the car, a smile crosses your face… the fire is out… the rain has come…and this, is just the beginning.
One of my passions in the summer time is storm watching, which leads to storm chasing and lots of photo’s (hopefully before the rain hits…
One of my passions in the summer time is storm watching, which leads to storm chasing and lots of photo’s (hopefully before the rain hits). Just some F.Y.I., all my lightning photo’s are legit, they are not photoshoped or computer generated. 100% natural storm. / Thanks
Ever since I began taking photography in the early days of the Army, I’ve been chasing the all powerful storm photo. Lightning has always…
Ever since I began taking photography in the early days of the Army, I’ve been chasing the all powerful storm photo. Lightning has always appealed to me and I’ve been fortunate to capture a few good shots. / This journal will be posted with new and old storm and lightning photography that I’ve taken over the past few years. / Hope to hear from you. / Here’s a few taken from Pops on Route 66 / / / March 15, 2008 Update / / ~~Gray Beard
To all lightning photographers, / Unfortunately it appears that our lightning season for my region is over the temp has dropped after our…
To all lightning photographers, / Unfortunately it appears that our lightning season for my region is over the temp has dropped after our big rains and it just seams to have nothing left. / I would like to thank all the storm chasers and fellow photographers for their comments throughtout the storm season and look forward to all your new works. Have a good one Matt White / Wildsnaps photography
I had a very pleasent surprize today, when I opened my email. “The Fortress” was featured as Today’s Best on Zazzle.com. Here, tak…
I had a very pleasent surprize today, when I opened my email. “The Fortress” was featured as Today’s Best on Zazzle.com. Here, take a look: / The Fortress Wheeey!!
WOW!! Doesn’t a good storm change people’s moods… the threat of hail, thunder & lightning.. people running everywhere, on edge, waitin…
WOW!! Doesn’t a good storm change people’s moods… the threat of hail, thunder & lightning.. people running everywhere, on edge, waiting… I love storms, if I had the time I reckon I would devote some of it to chasing storms. I started walking to & from work this week, reasons: fitness, pay cuts, fuel costs, etc etc, but I actually feel better for it. It’s roughly a 20 min walk, get’s me a bit sweaty in the morning, bit it’s downhill going home so it’s a bit of a wind down before I hit home & put my mother/wife hat on! But back to the storms… y’day we had a little teaser, people going crazy to get cars under cover (work in a Car Dealership) the lightning & thunder is happening (apparently a couple of lightning strikes were very close indeed!) OF ALL THE DAYS I DIDN’T HAVE MY CAMERA! (but I do today!) but there I was about an hour after the main storm, the rain was really light & drizzly & it was really quite exhilarating, with my head held high (dark clouds still looming), barefoot, rain drizzling on my face (I think I was actually having fun) walking home. As I got home the front door opened, greeted by my 10 yo son, “How wet did you get mom?” “How wet do I look?” I said, “Wet.” was the reply. Gotta love kids & their view on the world around them, but that’s another story.
I made this image for a challenge which consisted in creating A hand-made sunrise, sunset or sunbeam or storm work. After uploading i…
I made this image for a challenge which consisted in creating A hand-made sunrise, sunset or sunbeam or storm work. After uploading it to my portfolio, with some details as to how it was created, I was asked to post the tutorial in a Photoshop oriented forum. So there it is in a more detailed version. I hope that you will find it useful. Please do not hesitate to signal any mistake you might find or ask for clarification if you find some point confusing. This is the modified image: / I started with a not so interesting colour photo which presented a nice dense cloudy sky, and the trees in the foreground was dim and more in silhouette. It was shot at sunset, so the sky was not too bright, just enough to show a good definition in the clouds and suggest the presence of ozone in the atmosphere. My original photo was 3872×2592 pixels. The size of the photo is important to mention in this case because you might have to adjust the different values depending on your image size. Original image / If you prefer, you can use my original photo by right clicking on the link and saving to your computer. Link to original photo STEP 1 – CONVERT TO BLACK AND WHITE / I used a tutorial published by Design by Fire . It had been originally created by the photographer Greg Gorman’s photo retoucher, Rob Carr. If you decide to use this tutorial, please note that in Photoshop 6, you have to convert image mode back to 8 bits prior to step 4 where you need to Ctrl+Click (Windows) on the thumbnail of the Channels palette to load a selection, or else it won’t work. I don’t know how it is for other versions; you will have to try. For this image, I chose a greenish tone for my solid color adjustment layer in step 6, picking my colour at left, near the bottom of the color picker as shown in the tutorial (theirs is in a red palette instead of green). STEP 2 – CREATING RAIN After converting my image to a nice and rich black and white, I used another interesting tutorial that I found on the internet to create rain. This great and easy tutorial was made by Domen Lombergar and if you wish, you can view his tutorial on video right here However, I will write below each step of the tutorial anyway, entering the settings that I have used for this particular image. 1. You should now have a nice black and white image to start with. 2. Add a new layer, name it Rain and fill it with black. 3. Now we need to add noise. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and enter 400% in the amount value. You may have to enter more if your image is larger or less if your image is smaller. Check either Uniform or Gaussian, it doesn’t matter, but make sure that the box Monochromatic is checked. Click OK. 4. Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and play with the angle and distance until you are satisfied. In this instance, I chose a negative angle value of -41 , and a distance of 61 pixels . 5. I adjusted the opacity to 34% (may vary according to taste and to background image) and blended in screen mode. 6. The next thing was to create an adjustment layer on the background image (between the background and the rain layers) to darken the background a little and match the atmosphere. 7. I finished the rain process by cropping the blurred edges out, leaving me with image approximately 3780 by 2500 pixels in size. STEP 3 – CREATING A LIGHTNING BOLT For the last step, I created a lightning bolt using a great tutorial by Matthew Whiting 1. You need to start your lightning in a new document with the background set to transparent. My rainy black and white image was a little more that 2500 px high, and I figured that my lightning bolt would run from the little hole in the clouds to the bottom, meaning a little more than half of the height. Just to be sure, I made my new document a transparent square of 1500×1500 pixels. 2. Now you will fill it with a gradient. To do so, make sure that your default colours are set to black and white by hitting the D key. Then, pick your Gradient tool from the tools menu and in the horizontal menu at the top of your screen, choose a black to white gradient, making certain that the Linear gradient option is selected. Holding the Shift key, trace a straight horizontal line accross the layer, starting at about ¼ of the document and stopping at ¾. Placing a grid on your document could help you gauge where to start and finish, if you’re not sure. To do this, go to Edit > Preferences > Guides and Grid . In the Grid section, put 25 in the box marked Gridline every: , change the measuring units to %* , and write *0 in Subdivisions. Click OK then go to View > Show and select Grid . This is really useful as well to assess the rule of thirds. In that case, you just change the percentage to 33,3 in the Guides and Grid preferences. Back to the lightning now! 3. Now that you have a nice gradient, apply a Difference Clouds filter by clicking Filter > Render > Difference Clouds. 4. Your bolt is starting to show, but it is black and you need to change it to white. To do so, just hit Ctrl+i (Windows) or (Cmd+i in Mac) in order to invert the image. You could also use the command Image > Adjust < Invert . 5. Adding a Levels adjustment layer , you will push the black cursor to the right, mine was pushed to about 170 and slide the gamma (gray) triangle to the right as well, next to the white one which must remain at 255. Again, you might want to vary a bit according to your own image. 6. Select the image and go to Edit > Copy Merged, then paste into your rainy black and white photo, place into appropriate position, and blend in screen mode. 7. Now is the time to modify the general shape of the bolt if you find it too wavy. To do this, make sure that the bolt layer is active in the Layers palette and go to Edit > Transform > Distort . Pull the handle up to elongate the bolt a bit and or pull the sides in a bit if you wish. Apply your transformation when satisfied. 8. Should you wish to add little branches to your bolt, you can do so by selecting some that are sticking out and either cut or copy to a new layer, then position to taste. You can do this and reverse them horizontally to put some on the other side too. 9. When your bolt is shaped to your liking, use the eraser tool set at 0 hardness and 45 % opacity to slowly erase the extra blur around the bold and any remaining clouds (from the difference clouds step) that you don’t want. 10. Adjust levels again if needed. THE LAST STEP! – GLOWING LIGHT Finally, the lightning bolt needs some surrounding light to look realistic. 1. Create a new transparent layer, right under the rain layer at the top. 2. Select a large soft and round brush of 279 px and hardness set to 0, and adjust the Brush Dynamics to fade in size and opacity (I used 70 steps for size and 100 steps for opacity). 3. Make sure that white is the foreground colour in your default colours, select it and paint over the lightning bolt, starting from the bottom and going up to the originating point. 4. Apply a gaussian blur filter (I used 160 radius) and fix opacity to your liking. If you wish, you can add a spot of additional light at the point where the lightning bolt originates from the clouds using the same method as for the addition of glowing light along the bolt. 1. Create a new transparent layer, right under the rain layer at the top. 2. Select a large soft and round brush of 279 px and hardness set to 0, and apply a dot of white at the appropriate point. 3. Apply a gaussian blur filter (I used 160 radius) and fix opacity to your liking. Voilà! You should now have a great stormy landscape! I hope that I have not confused you too much. Have fun!
My photo The Power of Nature was recently featured in the “Sev…
My photo The Power of Nature was recently featured in the Severe Weather group. This is my first feature in a group. I’m happy, stunned and surprised all at the same time. A BIG thank you to those that chose my photo for the group feature.
Just sold 2 copies of a new calendar I only just put up to the 1 person. :) Thank you Jess!
Just sold 2 copies of a new calendar I only just put up to the 1 person. :) Thank you Jess!
Hello, I a not much of a writer and prefer the pro’s to do it for me. Seems I am missing some letters on my keyboard… well that’s ho…
Hello, I a not much of a writer and prefer the pro’s to do it for me. Seems I am missing some letters on my keyboard… well that’s how all my emails come out. It is real work for me to write something. Now that I am more active on redbubble I am going to try and write some entries. It has been a great spring for storm chasing and I am hoping for a lot more this summer. I have up loaded a lot more work and ave more to put on line. Check it out. Our local Boulder Newspaper the Daily Camera ( how fitting) did a piece on me. You can view it here at this link. Comments welcome! Thanks for the visit…. and please tell a friend! Here’s the link. / http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/jun/22/lightning-man-strikes-boulder-county/
So it’s Monday June 22nd, 9:30 at night and I am thinking there will be no storms tonight YEA, I need a break and boom another one comes …
So it’s Monday June 22nd, 9:30 at night and I am thinking there will be no storms tonight YEA, I need a break and boom another one comes in fast and furious. How many so far??? / / I have to tell you this was one of the scariest storms I have ever chased. Flashes of lightning in the clouds hitting in ALL directions. You could not tell where the bolts were going to strike. Now that’s very dangerous. This storm really scared me. There were times I would not even get out of the SUV. I chased this storm all over Boulder County open space looking for something interesting to photograph with the storm in the right position. Not always easy. It was heading North. This storm was so amazing and one of the only storms I have ever chased in 20 years like it. I was able to stay with this storm and it seemed we were traveling at the same speed. / / My location was always right off the middle in the rain. So north we went…. looking for something good. Seemed I was always by houses and not the subjects I was looking for. And when I did find something, the storm was not in the right position. Went through Berthoud…. then Loveland…. then Fort Collins… and then… it happened. I was finally out of residential areas and in wide open space and there it was… The Budweiser plant, all lit up and ready for me. And I have to tell you it was crazy. Flashes in all directions and very dangerous. When I first started shooting I would hit my shutter button and then sit in the back of the SUV with my feet off the ground. ( Fact:” Rubber shoes will not give you any meaningful protection from lightning.” So I am guessing my official Lightning shoes, crocs will not give “Meaningful “protection. Better than spikes ;-) That went on for a while. It got less threatening after a little time and I could relax without as much worry. The stormed hung in there till a little after midnight before heading into Wyoming. I almost kept going and I did for a little while but it was time to call it a night. / / This Bud’s for you. Print Gallery: http://www.AZLIghtning.com or htp://www.TheLightningMan.com /
Here is a selection of my favourite work in my folio, and would all make great Christmas gifts, and look great hanging on any wall! A…
Here is a selection of my favourite work in my folio, and would all make great Christmas gifts, and look great hanging on any wall! All my work is available in different styles and formats available through redbubble, and here is a preview: Farm Windmill Mosman Bay Boatshed At Dusk Jetty At Dusk Water Under The Bridge Cygnets Mobile Home Crawley Edge Boatshed Swan River Jetty At Sunset Thunderstorm At Dusk Bathed In Light Bathed In Gold Moody Morning Crepuscular Rays Sunshine After the Storm Reflections Kwinana Grain Jetty At Dusk Crawley Edge Boatshed Panorama Pink Cherry Blossom Flowers Standing out in a crowd Lake Clifton Thrombolites Lake Clifton Thrombolites Lily flower Mammatus clouds Honey Bee Lancelin Sand Dune Dusk At The Dunes Lancelin Sand Dune Three Of A Kind Path Of Shadows Sand dune / / Decoy At Sunrise Peaking through the window Kalbarri Beach / / Kalbarri Beach / / Kalbarri Beach Pinnacles / / Boat on the beach DNA Tower at Sunset Perth City Dusk Kings Park Lights Kings Park Lights Peak Hour Traffic Noble Falls Panorama Collie Dam Bird on a branch / / Black Swans Farm Trees At Sunset Chinese Meal Chinese Noodles Chinese Noodles Having trouble choosing a single artwork? Maybe My 2010 Calendar Is what your looking for! “
RedBubble is a great place to find art, design, photos and writing from over 80,000 talented people.
On stunning greeting cards, awesome t-shirts or beautiful prints to hang on your walls.
It’s really simple. If you’re not happy with your purchase for any reason, we’ll fix it.
Since February 2007 we’ve shipped over 326,400 items to more than 70 countries around the world.
Sign up for your free account, upload your work, join some groups and share your creative genius with the world.