Lightning Photos

[jaybreak]

Not photos, but still images taken from video. There was a brief, but intense, storm passing through the area yesterday evening. The bulk of it slid northeast of us, and the video I took was down our street, facing the sky in that direction. It dumped a lot of water on us maybe 30 minutes after this.

This first photo was one brief event, the remaining are all of another very active event. Saved the best still for last. Crazy stuff.

[Ed Hurst]

Good job; I can understand using video stills because lightning is notoriously hard to capture with a still camera.

[jaybreak]

Good job; I can understand using video stills because lightning is notoriously hard to capture with a still camera.

It was hard even with video, but I learned to be special friends with the space bar (to pause and unpause quickly).

[IainH]

Lightning is cool, especially when it hits close enough to where it's FlashKAPOW! and you smell ozone. I'll stay outside in it until I feel the static on my skin, then I retreat quickly indoors. Sometimes, I will walk up into the woods and try to find where which tree got hit. If I get lucky I will find one still smoking. The burn tracks are right interesting. Once back in the nineties, I was standing at the kitchen window of my folks house when one hit so close all I saw was a sheet on blinding white KAPOW!, Afterwards, Dad and I went to investigate and found the tree, it was 47 paces from the house. That was and remains the closest I ever want to get to a lightning strike. Just think, all that power is just an isty bitsy quark of what God has.

[jaybreak]

Lightning is cool, especially when it hits close enough to where it's FlashKAPOW! and you smell ozone. I'll stay outside in it until I feel the static on my skin, then I retreat quickly indoors. Sometimes, I will walk up into the woods and try to find where which tree got hit. If I get lucky I will find one still smoking. The burn tracks are right interesting. Once back in the nineties, I was standing at the kitchen window of my folks house when one hit so close all I saw was a sheet on blinding white KAPOW!, Afterwards, Dad and I went to investigate and found the tree, it was 47 paces from the house. That was and remains the closest I ever want to get to a lightning strike. Just think, all that power is just an isty bitsy quark of what God has.

Maybe 6 or 7 years ago, lightning struck a tree right next to our house. The sound was horrifying. The lightning cut straight through the trunk, and sliced a big branch clean off.

[Ed Hurst]

Yes, it is a fascinating and terrifying experience. I've been in a house where lightning burned out a wall furnace switch; the smell of melted hard plastic lingered for days. It once struck a tree about twenty feet from a church house where I was working in Texas. The tree showed no immediate signs of damage, but died over the next week.

[forrealone]

WOW!  That is really impressive to be able to capture lightning!   Good method!  Weather can be very awesome, inspiring and downright frightening.  We are HOT and dry......   Seems like most of y'all have had a hard time of it.  So grateful everyone is safe......

[jaybreak]

It's a good way to capture it, but not so good quality wise. Not like this guy.

http://www.jasonrweingart.com/lightning-photography

It's really a whole sub-discipline of action photography, it seems.