Lightning never strikes twice............

[malachite]

........in the same spot that is. Here's a couple I grabbed on the road overlooking Apache Lake, AZ earlier this week.

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[John E.]

Whoa...Holy Lighting Batman....Fantastic! That must have been incredible too witness. One of my favourite armchair activities is watching storms and I have never seen anything like that. The first picture is good enought, but the second picture really rocks.

[Sk8man]

wow!!! terrific quality!!!
what are the settings used? i'm sure it was a pretty long exposure...

[2Stupid2Duck]

The second one is a stunner.

[mad_malteaser]

Those are amazing! *Sigh* I miss lightning storms like that. I love the colours you captured in these. What settings did you use?

[pilgrim]

good god! those have to the best lightning pics I have ever seen! and the biggest lightning storm I have ever seen. Great work!

[hobbes28]

I rember saying a long time ago that I needed to move to AZ...... I have to say again how cool it is where you live. Awesome pic.

[Alison]

AWESOME

[mentos_007]

Holy Cow... I opened widely my mouth when I saw that! Weren't you afraid when shooting it???

[Scott WRG Editor]

Those are great, the first one would make a good poster

[mentos_007]

I love the second one.. can I take a print of it?

[BrettG]

Those pictures are absolutely incredible. The lightning in the first one is amazing, but I like the second one better.

We get bad lightning storms around here sometimes, but nothing like that! What were the settings you used?

[josh2449]

Please tell me you have a high-res of the second one.

I found my new background if you do.

[malachite]

I love the second one.. can I take a print of it?

My prints are always for sale or trade. A PM is all it takes to get one.

Settings huh? Let's see......

-Load your all manual 35mm SLR with Fuji 64T
-Slap on a 24mm lens for the 1st exposure, 28mm for the 2nd (to give you an idea of how close I was)
-Find a bit of soft ground to bury your tripod legs about a foot down because approaching storms are usually accompanied with tons of wind
-Set your lens to f/5.6
-Focus @ hyperfocal for f/5.6
-rubberband cable release to tripod head (remember the wind)
-Start exposure and start digi timer
-Go hide in truck for 7 minutes

Arizona is the lightning capitol of the world so shots like this aren't too hard to come by. It's just a matter of being in the right spot at the right time (sometimes you have to chase them). For the second exposure I was hoping to get a full horizontal shot with lightning all the way through it but the rain started so I had to abort that mission and live with 2/3rds of a frame. The lightning was only literally coming down on top of me by then.......

This was all suppose to be just a full moon shot of the valley and lake with lightning in the background but as soon as I started, the storm turned due east (right at me), clouds covered the moon, and it became a lightning show instead.

Thank you all for the comments...............

[malachite]

Please tell me you have a high-res of the second one.

I found my new background if you do.

I can arrange that.........it'll have my name and copyright on it though. I was actually thinking the same thing for myself but I want to scan a little differently for better quality in a smaller size. I'll get back with you though............