Glacier National Park Storm Cell, August 29, 2016 Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana

Photographs of a Glacier National Park storm cell. There's not much to say, that the pictures don't already describe, other than to add, it was cool to watch this storm develop and move across the front of Glacier National Park.  I just wanted to share these photographs of the storm cell in Glacier National Park, Montana - It's a simple post with not much more that a few pretty pictures and some description of the equipment and a short explanation of my camera settings.  These images of the storm cell over Glacier National Park, were taken from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

The first photos is of the storm cell developing and letting go of it's moisture. The following images are the cell developing, beginning to collapse and then moving though the area dropping heavy rain and creating high winds. I'd say the winds locally were 50 miles per hour as the storm moved though. I eventually had to quit shooting because the wind and rain became unbearable.  What's interesting about these photographs of the Glacier National Park storm cell, is how uncommon and rare it is to see this kind of cell develop, almost out of know where, over the mountains, and this late in the season.  We see them more often on the prairie.

All of the Glacier National Park storm cell photographs were taken with a Nikon D810, Nikon 17-35 f2.8 lens (Because I left my 14-24 in another Pelican case back home), mounted atop a Really Right Stuff tripod / ball head combination with a bag of rocks hanging from the center support. The shooting data indicates that I was all over the place with my settings and for good reason, because I was. I created these images at various ISO's from 31 (yes iso 31, the D810 goes that low) to 400 with shutter speeds ranging from a fraction of a second to up to 10 seconds and apertures from 3.2 to f22. What you cant really see in these Glacier National Park storm cell photographs is the lighting. There was lighting in the clouds, which is why there are lighter spots in the clouds.  But what I did not capture were any of the lighting bolts. . .  Unfortunately, my lighting trigger failed to pick up on the strikes (on the bright side, I got home and fiddled with it and got it working again, so now I'm ready for the next storm - which means the lightning storms are over for the year. . .  Ha, Ha, Ha.

Happy Shooting!  Tony Bynum