Couple of lightning shots, C&C please!

[SNBniko]

Taken with 20 second+ exposures. PP was a little bit of darkening overall and sharpening the bolt. I wish the sky was darker, but it was really orange and hazy. It was a really cool lightning storm, but my luck was crap. Every time I re-set the camera where the lightning was striking most often, it would start striking somewhere else. This is across the hay field at the barn... Thanks for any feed back!

 

[480sparky68 67]

First one looks oof. Second one looks much better.

 

[SNBniko]

I see that now... I'm not sure what it was focusing on. I did a mild crop, perhaps it was one of the pens up front. It was really windy, I wonder if my camera strap hit the tripod. I was trying to hold it out, but eh. This was my first attempt at lightning, I'm thrilled I got anything, haha. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Bodri]

I try and use radar to help with this. Knowing the direction the storm will be moving and setting up just a little in that direction from where you were seeing the strikes allows the storm to move into your field rather then you playing catch up.

 

[KmH]

Thanks for any feed back!

How about some blue sky, a bit of Clarity, and getting rid of some of the manmade stuff on the horizon. The sharpening was a bit overdone and I can't undo that:

 

[earthmanbuck]

The first one looks a little too blurry (which I know is sort of uncontrollable if it's windy), but the second one isn't too bad. I prefer the natural orangey sky to the blue one in KmH's edit, but I can see the benefit of cropping out the telephone poles. I think it's nice either way, though.

 

[powasky]

The first one looks a little too blurry (which I know is sort of uncontrollable if it's windy), but the second one isn't too bad. I prefer the natural orangey sky to the blue one in KmH's edit, but I can see the benefit of cropping out the telephone poles. I think it's nice either way, though.

I agree with you in preferring the original orange, but I actually like the powerlines. It's a contrast between the electricity in nature and the (tiny, comparably) electricity used by man.

 

[KmH]

I used the blue to increase the contrast of the background to the lighning bolt, so the lightning bolt shows up better.