When I travel to large cities I am always out for some cityscape shooting … unless there is a nasty thunderstorm as there was during my last visit to shanghai. Luck had it though that I had a room with a perfect view … took me some negotiating with the staff on check in 😉
While sitting in my room I realized that it was not only raining like all a hell broke loose but it was constantly lightning. The lightning however was stuck right overhead the hotel for a good hour until the storm started to move in the right direction. By that time I was more then ready to take in some special scenes. With the sky being dark enough by that time I set my camera to expose correct at 30s exposures and took shot after shot for 20 Min. straight until the storm had past. I was sure that I had at least a couple lightning bolts captured.
After downloading the pictures I realized that I had misjudged the impact of rain on the windows. This would not habe been all too big of a problem if every thing would have been dark. But even with my drapes shut I had so much light coming in from the surrounding city that every single raindrop on the window was perfectly illuminated. The drops were not in focus but they certainly gave nasty well lit blurs on the photos. All I could do then was to work the drops out one by one … quite an effort do do. But I like the shots quite a bit and feel that the extra effort was well worth it. Especially the shot with the Yan-an Intersection and the lightning com pined came out quite unique.
See for yourself!