After Hours

The other night I had just gotten Elliott to sleep when a loud jolt of thunder shook the house. Luckily Elliott is a pretty heavy sleeper, so it didn't seem to bother him. But the sudden pop-up summer thunderstorm was a good excuse to go and grab the camera and run out to try to get some pictures. 

There is a parking deck downtown that I've thought would be an ideal place to try to get pictures of lightning over the Little Rock skyline. So I hurried over as lighting brightened the sky like the flashes from a bunch of paparazzi's. I got to the top of the deck and set up the camera. But of course, the thunderstorm started to fizzle out. I managed to get just one little bolt of lightning before the storm sputtered out.



The deck also provides a really nice view of the old Albert Pike Hotel, which was built in 1929.



The clouds cleared out after the storm, and the moon appeared low on the horizon. So I headed to the car and hurried out and ended up by the State Capitol building. The moon had an orange and rusty tint to it, and I found a spot to get a picture of it next to the dome of the Capitol. It took a few tries to get the right exposure, but ended up with this shot. For the record, this isn't a fake AI image. And it's not photoshopped to make the moon look larger. This was all in camera (the details, if you're interested: f/8.0, 1/30 second exposure, ISO 800, taken at 290 mm with a zoom lens).