This was the first set of lightning photos I had taken in over a year! It was almost a fluke because of the time frame I had. I was heading to a party for my friend when I saw the incredible lightning over the mountains to my west. I stopped on a hilltop parking lot for a little over 20 minutes and shot the set. I normally don’t have my camera gear in my car, but with the monsoon finally kicking in, I had left the gear in the car. My only concern was the light. I normally shoot in darker areas; this time, I was overlooking a shopping center and the Southwest Auto park, so I had a lot of light to deal with. Unfortunately, my fear of over exposing and drowning out the lightning may have kept many of the pictures from being perfect, however, the ones that turned out were very good, many becoming some of my best to date.
I finally worked my full 12 hours, all inside! Actually, it was just over 11 and a half. I got up at 7:30a this morning, and I swear I’ve been on my feet for all but 30 minutes of that (its 1:45am now). My feet are certainly telling me so.
Work was work.. who cares.. the good stuff now.
I got home from work, showered and changed, then headed out. When I got home, the skies were clear. When I left (20 minutes passing), insane amounts of lightning were tearing the western sky ablaze with brilliant bolts. I left the house thinking, drat, I’m going to miss this opportunity. When I hit Quincy, about 3 minutes after leaving, I saw an awesome bolt split the mountain range in two. My camera was packed in the car, so I turned onto Wadsworth and pulled off into an elevated parking area and set up. I spun through 20 shots in less than 20 minutes; the fastest I had ever ran through a roll while shooting lightning. It was bright and awesome! The drawbacks to this were; first of all, I wasn’t sure I had the right speed film in the camera. I assumed (and turned out to be a safe assumption) it was 100 being I rarely ever put anything else in that camera. My f/stops were a guess due to the above average amount of light I had coming in from the area shopping center. Normally my lightning shots are done in darker areas where I can use f/5.6 or such. I was near f/11 shooting into this storm. Add to all that the lightning itself; brighter than anything I remember shooting, and close, within a few miles. In that 20 minutes, the storm drifted to the northeast, more east than north I think cause the lightning was definitely getting closer. James later confirmed it to be a more northerly track cause the storm ran right over him, nearly picking him off a couple times while on the phone with me.
The money shot; and this is what I’ll be holding my breath for. Lightning hit something and whatever took the strike exploded into a ball of flames. I had the film exposing for the shot, so assuming it wasn’t too low to the ground, I should’ve nailed that shot dead on, or as James puts it; “Right dead fuckin’ center.” I dialed up 9-1-1 and informed them that something on the hill was hit and blew up. I don’t know what came of that, but I figured better to be safe. It could’ve been someone’s car for all I knew. Whatever it was blew up, and I got it (hopefully) on film.
First thing after I awakened this morning, I hauled over to King Soopers and dropped my film from last night to get developed. An hour later, I returned to that first roll back in 1998 I developed where I waited like a kid at Christmas to see what my camera had captured. What I saw almost rivaled that first day.
Out of the 17 developed shots, 14 turned out to be better than average. Over an 80% success in shots I took last night, rather unheard of for lightning photography. Especially the fact that those pictures were taken within a 20 minute time span in a badly, over-lit area near my house. The shots, though (WOW), are incredible. Out of those 14, 9 are framable prints, with a couple that’ll definitely make my 8″x10″ collection. I was thrilled to death! I immediately sprinted home to show off my first lightning shots in well over a year. Two of my favorite shots (which will very soon be on my website) are two I took at opposite ends of the evening.
One, I’m calling “Tree Branch”, is the one I think that hit that blew out the transformer on the mountain. A tree on the left side of the print looks like the parent to the main bolt of the picture that darts in beautifully, connecting with the mountain top in the center of the frame. I could even see a red hue on the mountain top where the bolt connected with the object I clearly saw it hit. A smaller, secondary bolt, reaches out to the parent bolt with smaller sparks, it landing someplace behind the visible mountain range. That shot was a quick exposure (less than 30 seconds) set at f/11.
The second shot was a well exposed shot looking over Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge. This shot I took at about 1am about two seconds from James’s house. I’ll probably title that shot “Lutheran Lightning”, just for the fact that the branching bolt that fills the backdrop of the hospital glows well against the lights from buildings below. This shot was a longer exposed shot, probably around a minute, at f/8.
