We had some pretty impressive electrical and thunder storms the other night, and not to miss a trick, I set up my 10D on a tripod pointing out the window and set it going, hoping to capture some lightning - confidence was high considering the rate at which it was forking down to Earth.

Out of over 120 frames taken, I captured lightning on about 6 of them. This was the best by far - and what a stonker it was too! It seemed to weave around in circles, in and out of the clouds, before making a very decisive beeline down to Earth. I think I was lucky to get the result I did, but I'm not complaining :)

Whilst watching the storm, there were 2 strikes about 40 seconds apart that forked down pretty close by, but behind the houses over the road. Straight after hitting home there was the most eerie of sights - a large hemisphere of electric blue rose up from behind the house, flickering ever so slightly over a period of about two seconds before quickly shrinking down and being replaced with an auroral-green dome which lasted about a second before fading. This happened twice in a row at the same spot .... I wonder if it stuck some power lines or similar - I'll never know, but it really gave me shivers down my spine when I saw it.


Few technical details now. All my images were taken with a 28mm lens stopped right down to get the longest exposure I could (8 seconds) whilst keeping the sky dark, but not black. This way, when lightning did strike, firstly it would not be washed out by the sky, and secondly with the small aperture it would not bloom too much (the lightning is *very* bright compared to the ambient light levels). It was just down to luck after that - though I could see which area of sky was producing the best strikes so at least I would have a fighting chance!