About the December 2004 Cover Photo

Composite photo. One spring evening a large thunderstorm came rolling across the prairies. I went out chasing the clouds, driving madly around the country roads hoping that the I could find an interesting foreground to contrast with the boiling black clouds. Just as the sun was breaking through the clouds on the western horizon, I stumbled upon this grainery near Beaumont, Alberta. I set up the composition with a Canon EOS-1n and a 70-200mm lens, got out my trusty lighting trigger (bought used from a friend - go to www.lightningtrigger.com for more info on this product), set my exposure to 1/4 at f/11 with Velvia 50 (the longer shutter speed was acheived with a 2 stop ND filter over the lens), and let the lighting trigger trip my camera whenever a bolt of lighting lit the scene. The relatively short exposure only allowed capture of a single lighting strike at a time. To help recreate the intense drama of the storm, I pulled some lighting bolts from the other frames I had shot and merged it into one photo using Photoshop.

You can view more of my work at www.darwinwiggett.com and on my online portfolio.