Anyone who follows this blog or my photography knows of my obsession with trying to photograph storms and lightning. Last night I noticed some flashes of light coming from the north side of the house…turned out to be one of the most easily photographed lightning storms I’ve had the opportunity to shoot. It was also one of the creepiest and there was almost no thunder…kind of reminded me of the movie War of the Worlds.

Since the strikes were somewhat predictable (as far as lightning goes) I decided to take a gamble and use my telephoto lens to get in closer. Which made the lightning stikes larger, but it also severely reduced my chances of actually catching a strike in the frame.

Turns out I have become pretty decent at manually focusing my camera in the dark on something that I can’t see!

For a couple years now I have been trying to get a great lightning shot. Every time a storm comes up I get out my photo equipment and sit and wait, hoping to get lucky. I’ve witnessed LOTS of great lightning but the best lightning always seems to happen while I’m adjusting my camera, or in a different direction, or before I get setup.

Saturday night I noticed some lightning so I once again climbed up on my roof to take some shots. This photo is the first shot I took… good, but it still isn’t the great shot that I know is out there just waiting for me to grab. Plus the camera was zoomed way out so I had to crop about 80% of the frame. After I took this shot I made some adjustments and as I was doing so, “THE” shot happened, but as usual my shutter was not open. Sigh…I feel a bit like the coyote trying to catch the road runner. Nevertheless, the quest for ‘the shot’ carries on.

On a side note, does anyone else think this looks photoshopped? It isn’t. The only thing it’s missing is a cheezy wolf superimposed with some mountains in the background.

I was up late last night sorting through all the pics that yesterday’s storm provided. So I finally narrowed it down to just 2 that I will post here. There was another one that would have been cool, but I moved the tripod during the exposure, so it was blurry.

I decided it’s kind of harder to photograph lightning during the day because it’s hard to keep from overexposing the image. Also, I missed the best lightning strike of the whole storm while I was fidgeting with the tripod leg. Never did get that ‘exceptional’ lightning pic that I’ve always hoped to get, but i still got a few good ones.

Enjoy!

-click for larger version-

-click for larger version-