Very hectic day in the central Illinois area, especially when it comes to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To sum this chase up, it was of course, local. I must add, the convection happened to be somewhat weak, and elevated; although, these situations provided amazing colors and lighting effects to the storm structure(s). Just these few images in this account all include a "taste" of traveling S on IL I-57 from Champaign, to Coles County. In the two to three hour time span of driving around and coming home from a sibling's doctor visit, and an excited me happened to be sitting in the back, with the camera pointing N and E just about the whole time, trying to get some structure images. On I-57, my camera was set on Av Priority, and the F/stop was at F/7.1. No tripod, low ISO, and slow shutter speed happened to lightly blur images; keeping in mind traveling at 65mph doesn't help either lol. After getting home, another round of storms popped into the area. These were much weaker, not even severe warned such as the convection near Champaign. Around Oakland, IL, was where this "next round" happened to occur. The coolest lighting and structure views were quite persistent, with lots of lightning, which is really sweet to see during the daytime. At this point, the camera was on the tripod, finally. One of the best photo op memories yet!
Distance traveled: approx. 80 miles or so, to and back from the rural Champaign, IL area.
Pretty much, I am a beginner at photography stuff at the moment. Learning different camera modes all on my own, and sadly enough, I shot all these pictures in Auto Exposure Priority on my Canon Rebel. At some point though, if I can remember right, some of the shots were taken in Av Priority (which allows you to control the aperture/lens opening, which is also known as "depth-of-field") including ISO control, the film-sensor speed. The lower the ISO number, the better the quality the exposure will be...including the slower shutter speed. That's one thing I screwed up terribly this day. Happening to leave the ISO mode on Auto, it exposed all images at-least ISO 200-640, not a good thing for future high-resolution prints, post-processing, and more. A hint for controlling ISO - when using a lower ISO and low aperture/F-stop, be sure to load the camera up on a tripod or some kind of sturdy surface, it helps very much lol.
