Last summer we had some wicked storms roll through our area over the course of a few days. After witnessing the incredible show Mother Nature put on for us the first night, and not having a camera available to take pictures, when the storms fired up on night two I decided i had to attempt to photograph the lightning.
This was actually the first time I ever tried to capture lightning, so I was trying to find the right settings as I was taking the pictures. The most intense part of the storm lasted about 20 minutes. Apparently I had more than one close call fate that night.
Intensifying Storms
These first two images are looking South from the front of our house as the storm was building in and intensifying. The bolts seemed to "crawl" across the sky in slow motion lasting 2 or 3 seconds. The kind of thing you see captured by storm chaser on The Weather Channel. Obviously my photos are slightly less professional. LOL
I moved back and forth from the front windows to the back windows as the different storm cells produced lighting in different areas of the sky.
Too Close for Comfort
As the show went on I slowly dialed in on the correct settings to capture the high contrast bolts with more clarity and less grain in the image. I also captured something that should have been a HUGE WARNING if I had noticed it in the display previews after each picture.
In the next picture you will see a faint "step leader" coming down to the roof of the house behind us. If that had connected and closed the sky-to-ground circuit... that would have been way too close.
And Then It Happened
As I waited with my finger on the shutter release, the hair on my arms stood up with a static charge. I instantly thought "Shhhiiiiit!" and quickly pulled back from the window and dropped down to the floor. BAM!!!!! The room lit up light daytime and the house shook with the thunderous boom that followed the ear-splitting crack of the initial bolt hitting just outside.
I'm not sure exactly where it hit, in front, in the back, or the house itself, but I decided to call it quits for the night after that.
I went to my computer to move the images over from the camera's SD card and discovered this image as the last photo I took that night. This was the photo taken as I accidentally pressed the button in my dive to the floor.
That step leader is in front of the palm fronds, that palm is only 9 feet from the house, the fronds reach out to be only 3 feet from our back window.
So did I learn anything from this. Sure I did... Lightning is Awesome!
Will I do it again this Summer if the storms put on a show... You Know It!
This year I will be better prepared to get higher quality photos.
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