Ethiopia - A Flash in the Sky

Photograph taken in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (JULY 2004)

I had the priviledge to visit Africa for the first time right in the middle of the rainy season. This is what you could expect from the weather over there, but luckily it only lasts for about a month or two in the middle of (European) summer.

I had to use my mother's Canon EOS 3000, since my own broke down right before the trip. Too bad I only had a 200 iso film. Didn't turn out to be such a good idea for long exposure shots taken at night from the roof top of our residence.

This was the only one out of the dozen other shots I took that night, which actually managed to capture the lightning on flim. That was of course the whole point, but since I'm not psychic, it was very hard to predict when the next one was going to strike. I've never seen the sky light up like that before though. The light stretched out from one corner of the city to the other. Apparently it's quite common, since the whole capital is situated at over 2000m on top of a mountain. Storms tend to act a bit differently up there...

During our flight home, we flew through what the captain called a plasma storm. Basically we were in a cloud of electricity and we could see the sky flash before our eyes. All I could see was white and blue all around us. I'm still amazed to have survived that whole experience. It's not everyday that we fly through a pool of current in metallic objects with wings.

Hope you enjoy this little memory from Africa I promise to bring some proper wildlife action from my next trip. I just hope I get my camera fixed by then...

AFRICAN EXPOSURE 2005 | See more from the same collection [link]

Edit: This photo required some heavy editing (mainly levels and contrast), since I was using a really bad film and the original was all washed out. Thank God for Photoshop!