LPOTY 2023

I’m pretty sure that I can make some kind of quip about lightning striking twice with this one. After picking up a Judges Commendation in the 2016 competition with an Image I only entered at the last minute as I needed to make up the number in my entry, I‘ve managed to repeat the feat again, this time with one of only two images entered.

Big national competitions on the whole aren’t really my cup of tea. I’ve found competitions useful at my local camera club (Viewfinders of Romsey) as a way of getting good quality (in the main) constructive feedback on my images, especially earlier on in my photographic journey. It was incredibly useful to have my images critiqued in front of a crowd with all the technical foibles exposed. A branch protruding into the frame, unbalanced elements distracting the viewer or other minor technical issues. In my professional career I’ve always subscribed to the old adage that you don’t learn from your successes, only your failures and I’ve caried that over to my photography. If something doesn’t work I want to understand exactly why and eliminate it in future.

I can’t really put my finger on why I decided to enter this year, I’ve had images since 2016 that I think could possibly have done well, but never felt the urge to enter them, so it was a nice surprise to find out in late in July that I’d made it through to the next round and then in September to find out it was through to the final and would be included in the book.

Anyway, about the image itself. I’ve always had this composition in mind for this kind of shot. Over the past 5 years I’ve either been too lazy to get out of bed or the lightning has been in the wrong location. On this occasion it looked like the front would track up over the Isle of Wight and either hit to the west of Lepe or the east. It’s a location I know pretty well as it’s 20 miles down the road and somewhere we used to take our kids all the time when they were young and somewhere we still go to all the time, whatever the weather just to feel and smell that fresh sea breeze.

The rain was absolutely bucketing down when I arrived, proper cats and dogs. I’d packed as lightly as I could; One camera body, one lens, a bag full of dry cloths, plastic bags and lens wipes and more importantly, Waterproof clothing. Now, getting dressed in the pitch black, whilst stood in gale force winds and driving rain isn’t the easiest thing in the world and . It was only when I started walking down the path to the boathouse that I thought something didn’t feel quite right, my usual stride was somewhat restricted due to having my waterproof over trousers on back to front and slipping down. Fun fun fun!

The actual setting up of the shot was fairly simple, you can’t really stand anywhere else if you want to keep the hand rail and steps leading down to the cottage, so its a composition I’ve shot many many times in the past.

I’ve shot lightning before, and the actual technical side is fairly simple, unless you have a lightning trigger you want to take 10 second exposures continuously and hope that you capture something. If you take some test shots you want to make sure that the shots are pretty much black, the lightning should (In theory) provide enough light when it strikes to light up the scene and not burn out the bolts themselves. In this instance I’d been shooting (and trying to keep the lens clear) for about 10 minutes. Annoyingly pretty much all the strikes were behind me, towards Cowes and Portsmouth, I was starting to think that I’d made a mistake and picked the wrong location. I could hear footsteps walking on the road right behind me which startled me a bit, as the guy drew level with me the bolt struck in front and all I heard was the guy loudly exclaim “Holy f**k!!”, I think I probably uttered something along similar lines. The shutter closed and I turned off the remote trigger. To be honest, I didn’t really need to check the image in the viewfinders. It was one of those moments where you know you’ve captured something special.

Getting home I was really looking forward to seeing the image on my large monitor. There wasn’t too much to edit really, a bit of cropping, adjust the levels, boost the shadows and work some photoshop magic to try and remove the odd rain smear, followed by a bit of noise reduction work.

Funnily enough, I don’t think the image scored particularly well when I put it in for a Camera club assessment. From memory I think it got an 8, which basically equates to “Technically it’s OK, I just don’t like it”. It’s been submitted for the regional league so it will be interesting to see how it does in that.

Will I enter LPOTY next year? I’m not sure, If I have an image that I feel will do well then I possibly might.