Alpha Collective member Stan Moniz (@stanmoniz) is the type of photographer who is always up for an adventure if it means a good story and a great photograph. He’s captured bioluminescent waves and astrophotography in the past, and he’s also captured epic lightning strikes over the ocean. But this time he’s captured both bioluminescent waves and lightning bolts in the same photograph…and it’s as awesome as it sounds. We caught up with him to learn more about how he captured this epic shot using the Sony Alpha 1 and Sony 16-35mm f/4 G PZ.
Photo by Stan Moniz. Sony Alpha 1. Sony 16-35mm f/4 G PZ. 30-sec., f/4, ISO 400
Photographer and Alpha Collective member Stan Moniz shares how he chased a storm from the desert back to the beach to capture this incredible moment.
Stan’s Typical Photography Kit For Storm Chasing
When storm chasing, Moniz takes either his Sony Alpha 1 or Sony Alpha 7 IV and three lenses – the Sony 135mm f/1.8 G Master, Sony 35mm f/1.4 G Master and the Sony 16-35mm f/4 G PZ. “The 135mm is for the far away stuff,” he explains, “because I do a lot of timelapse scenes where I get zoned in on one specific spot, like rain clouds dropping over a mountain. Then I bring my 35mm in case I stay out late to get lightning at night. But for this shot, since it was still during the day, I used the 16-35mm Power Zoom with my Alpha 1.”
“I didn’t need the faster aperture or the size of a G Master for this shot, so the Sony 16-35mm f/4 G PZ was perfectly fine. The internal zoom, sharpness and low weight of this lens fits great in my backpack. Plus since I was shooting on the Alpha 1 in crop mode at 35mm, that would give me 52mm - still a lot of megapixels to work with. So for me, this lens is a super versatile option for video and photo.
The Chase
A recent hurricane nearby had created the conditions for the storm, and Moniz went through 15 hours of storm chasing to try to capture its power. “We started at Laguna Beach where there were some really cool dramatic clouds, but we chased the storms on the radar up to the desert to Borrego Springs. It was probably 500 miles of driving by the end of the day just following the radar. The sky was so dramatic, it looked like a Marvel movie everywhere.”
As he drove through the mountains, Moniz could see an abundance of rain foot ahead in the mountains, or the central column of rain during a thunderstorm. “It's like this floating cloud that's a super cell,” he says. “There’s this straight drop of dark rain and it’s just blue around it. There was so much of that out in the high desert as we were chasing so I thought we were definitely going to score with the lightning during the daytime.”
The radar photographer Stan Moniz followed for the storm
As Moniz continued chasing the storm, he made his way into Joshua Tree National Park where there wasn’t enough service to follow the radar. He knew that at Keys View in the Park he could get service, so he made his way there to see on the radar that the storm was making its way back to the beach. “So we left and started to chase the storm back to Laguna Beach, which was an hour and a half away,” he says. “The entire time I’m watching at the San Clemente SurfLine cam and having complete FOMO because I can see the lightning on the cam. I was shaking my head in traffic because we went all over the place only for it to be happening right by my house!”
Bolts & Bioluminescence In One Shot
Moniz followed the radar and went straight to a beach called Shaws Cove, where the image was taken. He says he joked how awesome it would be to also capture bioluminescence that had been in the area, but wasn’t very hopeful since it’s here one day and gone the next. “We got there and I ran down to the beach as fast as I could. It was pretty dark and I saw a wave break and the whole area of the ocean lit up. I thought, you’ve got to be kidding me! What are the odds of that happening?”
He could tell the storm was losing its power, but could still see a couple of big bolts so he quickly set up his tripod. “I know this beach very well, so it was easier for me to set and shoot,” he explains. “I didn't have time to mess with the manual settings because I couldn't judge where the lightning was. Basically when lightning's closer, your exposure time is shorter because the light is brighter when it hits. If the lightning is further, you can do a longer exposure. The lightning here was a little bit further away, it was in between California and Catalina Island. So what I did this time around, because the light was pretty bright and the Alpha 1 is really good at metering, I put it in Aperture Priority Mode, but Manual Focus, of course.”
He continues, “There were some lights from houses on the cliff, so I just focused on those lights at 35mm for this image. I used my Focus Magnification with which I have set to my Custom Function Button C2, and I magnified all the way in. I used Focus Peaking and set it to red. Once I got that light that was coming from their houses sharp like a pinpoint red dot, I knew I was sharp. Then I set my ISO to 400 and had it at this widest open aperture, which was f/4 and it was giving me an exposure time of 30 seconds. I put it into the intervalometer mode and let it run. I got really lucky with this image because the storm was on its last leg. Within 20 minutes the entire thing went dormant and died.”
Different Editing Styles In Lightroom
Once Moniz gets the images he wants, he brings everything into Lightroom and uses a little-known trick to choose the style for his images. “One thing I always check out in the profile correction is my chromatic aberration. I'll check that, so I can take some of the distortion out of the image if I don't like it. Then I go to the top, to my profile. Most people only see Adobe color, Adobe landscape, Adobe portrait, Adobe neutral, but they never go to the Browse section. There are a lot of cool looks there that you can apply, especially in the newer version of Lightroom.”
He continues, “One that I'm really fond of is Artistic 01. There's a modern look and a vintage look. It's pretty funny for even some people that have been doing this for a super long time, they don't even check the Browse. It just gives you something different. So Artistic 01 is what I used for this image. I was going in between landscape, adobe landscape or an Artistic 01. I went with Artistic 01 and then played around with stuff after that. It depends on the image, but it gave me deeper shadows in the blues in a way. It's just another handy tool to add to the style of editing. I tend to change my style.”
Interested in this photograph? Find it in Stan's online gallery HERE.
See more of Stan Moniz's work on his Alpha Universe Profile and on Instagram @stanmoniz.
