Lightning Photo

The light show we got last Friday night was so much FUN!  One amazing moment, I was able to get this photo.



The actual lightning tracing across the sky was phenominal!!

Here's the delima I face.  I will ponder "aloud", and if any of you have ideas, suggestions, or whatever, please comment and let me know!

Obviously there is a large part of the shot that is "blown out" - meaning, there is so much light that all you can see is white.  It cannot be adjusted in any way.

Here is an edit I did in PSE (Photoshop Elements).  I tried to darken the photo enough to be able to see the rest of the lightning without making it look completely fake.




No matter what I did, the middle was still just a white blob.  If I darkened it to the extreme, it looked somewhat contrived.  (and still had a large blown out middle.)  Although, now that I'm looking at it from the school's computer, it doesn't look all that bad....  What do you think?  Which one looks better on your moniter?




I wonder if I should use a polarizing filter or some other kind of filter while shooting lightning in order to avoid this.  OR  Is it completely imposible to avoid this kind of blow out when there is that much lightning at once??  Anyone have any thoughts or ideas??

Of course, I'm thrilled that I even captured it at all!!!  What a light show it was!  More pictures of it in this post here and of the clouds and sunset that night here.


Much Love!

Tiffany