I went out to Lac La Biche, Alberta to visit some friends of mine in the summer of 2009. When I was single I spent many weekends in Lac La Biche or more specifically Owl River. They are north of the lake more to the east side and are opposite side of the lake from the town named after the lake. We would go quading quite a bit. I have a Honda TRX 500 ATV that I started just leaving at their house I was out there so much. There are fantastic trails all around their area. It's full of little lakes. One lake way we used to go to out in the middle of nowhere even had a natural sand beach. I had so many good times out there there's too many to list.
This particular time we were just hanging out. They had their cousins out at the same time that I was there. The five of us were hanging out quite a bit at that point. We heard a thunderstorm rolling in and went out on the deck to check it out. I had my camera and tripod and decided it was the perfect time to try and get some good lightning shots. I had quite a time trying to capture the lightning. I must have taken a thousand shots just to get maybe half a dozen shots with lightning.
I like the color of the sky in this first picture. The lightning bolt is nice and crisp looking too. It didn't wash out everything surrounding the lightning bolt. I think the smaller strikes make better pictures.
As the sun went down there was this reddish half circle that formed in the sky. I would have taken pictures of that alone. It formed kind of an arc like a rainbow but only had the reddish pink of the sunset.
This is my favorite shot. It has a nice clean lightning strike and you can still see the reddish arc in the sky. I wish I knew what the name for that arc in the sky is, if it even has a name. I'm sure I'm not the first person to see something like this.
This was by far the brightest lightning strike I managed to capture. It looks lighter outside like maybe the pictures are out of order but actually the lightning was just lighting up the sky that much. It was getting pretty dark outside by that point.
I hope you like my lightning pictures at sunset.
Good luck to all of those in the GoldenHourPhotography photo contest.