I love thunder storms.

In 1981 I worked for a company called Signetics. I worked a swing shift and would travel home to from Orem Utah to Spanish Fork, Utah after I got off work around 12:30 AM. One night there was a very lightning active storm and as I traveled along the freeway toward home I counted almost to the second a lightning strike every 20 seconds.  So when I got home I decided for the first time in my life to try and photograph the strikes. I grabbed my camera and tripod and ran to a cement ditch near the subdivision where we were living at the time and got into the ditch so that I would lessen my chances of becoming a lightning rod. (The tripod already was a good enough start on that.) I felt fairly secure though since the storm was all to the west and also north of me about four or five miles away. Well I shot an entire roll of 24 images at 30 second exposures each while trying to capture the lightning. I would see a strike and try to get it but of course by then it was over so I would position the camera to where I thought the next strike might occur and open the shutter and wait the 30 seconds. Well when the film came back I had a total of two images with lightning in them but one of them was with 3 strikes and has been a favorite of mine since then. I don't have a copy of that image currently so that I can show it but have since then photographed many storms and with increasing ability to capture the strikes. Below are some examples of one storm shot from the comfort of my front porch during the storm in late August.  I think these photos were taken in 2004.

Not all lightning storm images have to have strikes in them to be impressive to me. I have learned over the years of photographing lightning that sometimes the clouds lit up by sheet lightning can also make for some impressive images. As in the image above.




The morning following this storm I learned that a horse had been hit and killed by a direct strike. Judging from the location of the field where it was and my home I have always wondered if this was the guilty strike so I have called it "The Horse Killer".