Jonathan Smith is a web designer, graphic designer, and photographer in Harrisburg, PA.

An amazing storm just passed over Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with an outstanding lightning show.

This was my first attempt at photographing lightning. The trick was to set my Nikon D70 at a wide angle to catch as much of the horizon as I could. I also set the focus at infinity since there really wasn’t anything to focus on.

The Nikon D70 was mounted on a tripod for stability because I would be taking a long exposure. By putting the Nikon D70 in Manual mode, I’m able to turn the shutter speed open as far as possible. This puts the camera in “Bulb” mode. Meaning the camera would expose as long as I held the shutter button down.

Playing with the aperture, I was able to watch the horizon for the lightning and hold the shutter button down until I felt I captured a few strikes. It’s a lot of luck and practice to capture lightning.

These were taken from my balcony facing east. Not the most un-obstructed view or the prettiest, but it’s the way the storm was heading. Probably not the wisest thing to be standing on a metal rood holding a metal tripod. But a photographer has to get his shot!

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Over the weekend I attended a fun outing with some old friends. I haven’t seen them in a while and there were a lot of other people who I have seen in the past but who I didn’t know personally. I don’t like to stereotype, but they looked like the white-supremest  type. After a while the topic of conversation merged to Obama having his own “private army”.

Now I never heard of this at the time and didn’t want to voice my opinion having not known these people very long.  They touted that Obama would soon have his own private army and that they were prepared to defend themselves. I’m thinking to myself – what do we have to defend ourselves against? Well, today I found some information on Obama’s so-called “private army” and laugh at how these people felt threatened by something that they obviously didn’t bother to fact check.

On a lighter note, I later was able to spark up some conversation regarding Indian food and sushi so even though some of these people looked like they would not try any sort of ethnic foods, a few of them did and absolutely loved it. Lessen learned, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. But also, fact check before going off the deep end.

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I always think about you when I hear this song. The title fits you perfectly.

Pearl Jam – Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In a Small Town

I seem to recognize your face
Haunting, familiar yet, I can’t seem to place it
Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me
All these changes taking place, I wish I’d seen the place
But no one’s ever taken me
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away… (2x)

I swear I recognize your breath
Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising
me, you wouldn’t recall, for I’m not my former
It’s hard when you’re stuck upon the shelf
I changed by not changing at all, small town predicts my fate
Perhaps that’s what no one wants to see
I just want to scream…hello…
My god its been so long, never dreamed you’d return
But now here you are, and here I am
Hearts and thoughts they fade…away…

Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away… (2x)
Hearts and thoughts they fade…fade away…
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away… (3x)
Hearts and thoughts they fade…

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