Lucky Lightening Shot

I have always wanted to take a good picture of lightning. I remember spending hours on Lago Atitlan with Chad and David trying to capture cloud to cloud lightning with our cameras. We never caught any bolts, and the images failed to capture what an amazing storm we were getting to see.

I took this picture in Umfolozi game park last weekend. The second night, a large thunderstorm came through and I swapped my digital camera out for my (mom's) 35 mm Nikon (thanks again Mom). The lightning display was truly amazing. Huge bolts of cloud-to-ground lightning all around us barely preceeding deafening cracks of thunder. Yet, not a drop of rain at this point. I set my shutter speed to 8 seconds and maximally opened the aperture. I had to sit and hold my camera steady on my knee while the shutter was open, and a few of the pictures came out blurry as a result (I need a tripod!). But during one of the shots, a huge bolt struck right in front of me and the thunder clapped right behind it (suggesting that it was pretty close to us). I saw the bolt for a few seconds after it had dissapeared, somehow still imprinted on my awe-struck retinas. Thus, I thought this particular shot might come out well. The other 10 shots I took were kind of ruined by cloud to cloud lightening that drowned out the stark contrast of the bright whtie bolt against the dark black sky. This one was just lucky I guess.

I developed the pictures Saturday, and had the photo store make me a CD of the images so I could post them. I cropped the picture a little, so the bolt looked a little middle. This .jpg makes a great desktop background as its black all the way around the edges, so email me if you would like a full size copy for your computer. Would be happy to share.