Night lights
On your left, in the center distance: the ballfields of the Parade Grounds on the last sultry night of a June heat wave. Guys are running the bases (visible to the naked eye, if not to my little zoom lens); they are oblivious not only to the heat, but to the ominous rumbles of thunder. From our third-floor window, I can hear their merry cries as doom approaches.
On the right: Yikes! Your photographer, who is very afraid of lightning, has been holding the point-and-shoot steady on the windowsill until she jumps out of her skin. The baseball players? No problemo. They continue their carefree game while the sky flashes like FX in a horror movie. Only the arrival of pelting rain sends them packing. To my knowledge, no corpses were found by home plate this morning wearing singed catchers' mitts or clutching charcoalized bats. You think this is bad? After 20 years of this view across Caton Avenue to the Fields of Dreams, we know better. The soccer players (the big boys from South America and the islands, not AYSO)—they play in the lightning and the rain.
By the way, for a really cool picture of the storm that broke the heat wave, check out this glorious shot from Brit in Brooklyn. I'll bet he didn't have to improvise a crude burst mode by taking one picture after another and hoping that a lightning strike would occur during the interminable shutter lag...
The trick is use a tripod and a long exposure (1 second would do it).
Posted by: Xris (Flatbush Gardener) | June 17, 2008 at 04:06 PM