Dux skunk Wednesday

Afternoon launch from Stinson, out to Dux and down to Rocky Point and back to Stinson for zip, but a great show after sunset as lightning started hitting the water along the horizon and under the storm approaching the Golden Gate.

After looking in vain for the sweet spot to land I removed the spectacles and landed through big surf in the dark where I was met by Stinson life guard and ranger who said Coast Guard was hunting for a kayak. A boat reported seeing flares shot in the area, thought it might be me. Lifeguard reported in to CG via radio but boats/helicopters were still searching the area when I left.

They also wanted to know if I'd seen a dead blue whale that's drifting through the area. That would be a big one. There are biologists who want to locate it, they think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of Steep Ravine.

Beautiful water and spectacular lightshow, overall an interesting trip fish or no fish

Sound like you had a adventure and some excitement. your a lot braver than most with the night landing in ruff surf plus lightning strikes..."WOW"!

Did you get any pictures? Love seeing the lightning reflection on the water.
I've haven't seen that in a long time, only seen it on the Monterey bay a couple of times and I was just amaze what show mother nature was putting on for me!

I need to learn something about taking pictures. But anyway here's what it was looking like, worth it just for the scenery

Your pictures look fine to me!
Heck..... it would be hard for me to even think about using a camera in the conditions you fish.

Your pictures look fine to me!
Heck..... it would be hard for me to even think about using a camera in the conditions you fish.

Conditions yesterday were great for photography I just didn't take any smart shots

It'd be nice to get action snaps of wilder conditions but the water keeps you too busy for it, maybe I need a headmount voice activated system. They never seem to capture the feeling of the place anyway. Maybe video would be better

And in the first picture of the water you can see it looked like a big lake of mercury, you don't get exactly those conditions very often. I should've swung my kayak around and taken it so it was just all water and sky, no kayak/fishing rod cutting across the picture. It's unreal when it looks like this. The spec in middle of horizon is the top of dr-1

Your 3rd pic with the beams of sunlight looks like a religious experience  

Your 3rd pic with the beams of sunlight looks like a religious experience  

Closest thing to religious experience was prowling the back of big breaking surf with lighting streaking across the sky on the horizon and over toward s.f.

3 big aircraft flying formation with searchlights made it even more interesting, I had a hunch somebody was in trouble

To get good lighting shots you are going to need different gear and I am pretty sure you could not do it well from a kayak. I used to shoot a lot of it in Texas. Tri-pod mounted camera, shutter stuck open then wait for the lightening and close the shutter. Do think that would work well from a kayak.

Bluekayak,
What kind of camera were you using. Depending on if ti is a simple point and shoot or one with more manual override. In order to take lightning shots you have to set the camera on a fast ISO, a large aperture (small number like 2.8 or 4) and a long exposure time. Lightning is bright enough that it acts like a flash. The first time I tried to take lightning shots I set the aperture low because I was scared I would overexpose. The shots came back all blank. You want a big bright  aperture open for a long time to catch the flashes. The movement in a kayak might make it pretty hard to get a good shot.

Looks like Bill beat me to the punch.

I will defer to you davkrat, you are a much better photog than I  

DPReview http://www.dpreview.com/news/0501/05010501pentax_optiowp.asp shows that there is a Firework mode you can go to. I downloaded the manual and as it says you want to use a tripod to avoid camera shake. Fireworks burn a lot longer than most lightning. But the shutter would stay open for the 4 seconds and probably uses a wide open aperture. You just click a bunch of shots and hope during the 4 seconds some lightning occurs. Dur ring a real intense storm your luck should be pretty good. I don't have much experience shooting lightning. If anyone has ever done the trick where you tune an AM radio to a static station you can hear the lightning strike over the radio. Talk about some amplitude. Well someone I believe in Texas developed a receiver you attach to your camera that actually trips the shutter when it hears the amplitude spike. It's like a heat seeking lightning camera.