Folkin’

Two weeks ago, my friend Jake and I attended the Philadelphia Folk Festival.  This marked my second trip to Scwhenksville, PA for the three-day hootenanny and Jake’s first.

You can read more about the festival on Tri State Indie.  I wrote a few posts about The Folk Festival Friday, Saturday Afternoon’s Woody Guthrie Tribute and what it’s like to Folk all Saturday night at the Folk Fest.  Also,  you’ll find more photos from the fest there.

Friday night I captured a few photos that triggered the ‘wow, this is a sweet picture’ voice in my head.  Thunderstorms produced some lightning flashes behind the stage of the festival.  While the Celtic dance band, Comas picked away, I was trying to get another bolt of lightning on film (well, CCD film). I succeeded.  Here are the results:

Lightning strikes in the distance as Comas plays.

Lightning strikes in the distance as Comas plays.

Lightning Bolt

Ever since I can remember using a camera I have wanted to capture a bolt of lightning.  Well, tonight I captured my first lightning bolt on ‘film.’

There was a big ole cloud floating over the farm fields of Lancaster, producing no rain and seemingly moving away from Herrbrook farm.  IT provided the perfect vantage point to set up and snap away sometime exposures.  As elusive as this was, I got this shot while testing out exposure times.  This was probably my 5th shot and halfway into my 1:15 exposure the cloud erupted. I sat there, barely able to wait for the shutter to close so I could see what the shot looked like.

Here it is what it looks like: