Last year I had the opportunity to attend the launch of space shuttle mission STS-123, which was a night launch and that was particularly exciting for me. We arrived on the site around 4 p.m. in the afternoon even though the launch wasn’t scheduled for liftoff for another 11 hours – each minute that went by was filled with the anticipation of what my resulting photos would look like.

I knew from my lightning photography experiences that dealing with extremely bright subjects against a black sky are very difficult to capture – so I found the website of a very talented NASA photographer and he was kind of enough to answer my questions with his best advice – “Forget your camera, seeing a night launch is almost a religious experience and you don’t want to lose the moment to viewing it through your camera’s viewfinder.”

I took his advice, well…sort of. I decided to attempt an extended exposure shot with the aperture locked down so tight that hardly any light could get to my digital camera’s sensor and I used a few polarizing filters on the lens to stop it down even further – I had heard that it is impossible to underexpose a shuttle launch, no matter how hard you try, so I tried everything to limit the amount of light from getting into my camera.

My thought process was that I knew when those massive rocket engines ignited it was going to turn night into day and since my sensor was open it would absorb any light that made its way into my camera’s body – so I had to limit (as much as possible) any light to getting into the camera when I opened the shutter. Because I wanted to just forget the camera was there and enjoy the moment. And, I did – immensely.

However, the photograph didn’t turn out quite as expected – it was cloudy that night and I was hoping for a clear sky to get that “arc of light” look as the shuttle lifted off and then pitched and rolled into the night sky. Instead I got a streak of light that disappeared into a cloud base, but it wasn’t overexposed!

Granted, it’s not even close to being the best shuttle liftoff moment captured on silicon, but being the fact that I didn’t even touch my camera during the initial liftoff there is no way I would have been able to pull off a photograph like this if it hadn’t been for my experience photographing lightning.

Lightning is my favorite process of nature to photograph – tornadoes are my favorite to watch. My advice for photographing tornadoes is pretty much dead-on with the advice I received from the NASA photographer – if it’s something you don’t expect to see that often, then don’t worry about your camera – take it all in with your eyes. That being said, I do recommend the use of a video camera for tornadoes – that way you can set it up on a tripod, lock the focus into infinity and then point it and forget about it while you take it all in with the best camera you have – your eyes.

Lightning on the other hand is a different game – it’s not only neat to photograph, its fun! In fact, it can easily get addictive, especially if you have a digital camera. It wasn’t that long ago that our only option was film based cameras and when using film you never knew while you were in a “lightning session” if you were overexposing, or underexposing your images. Digital cameras allow you to have a bit more creative freedom since you can see the results instantly and then fine tune your camera’s settings based on how constant the distance and brightness of the lightning is at the time.

Most people new to lightning photography approach it as if they are taking a portrait – they’ll stand there holding their camera body carefully while lining up their shot and then pressing their shutter as quickly as they can and hope to capture a lightning strike during one of their attempts.

If you come along on one of my tours and I see you doing this – I might just let you carry on with it for awhile (for my own amusement) until I decide to show you a better way of doing things. I’m only kidding – I would never be so cruel! Or would I? (This is where I insert an evil laugh).

All kidding aside, if you want to capture amazing lightning photographs you cannot play the world’s fastest shutter game. You might get lucky – but the chances are you’ll miss every time because of something called “Reaction Time.”

Reaction Time is measured with this formula: RT = a + b log2 (n + 1), where a and b is constant representing the intercept of a sensory stimulus presentation and slope of functions, and n is the number of alternatives.

Math? Seriously? It basically just means that lightning is faster than the time it takes you to recognize it and then send a message from your brain to your finger to press the shutter release. The chances are well over 1 in 1000.

The lightning photographer’s best kept secret – as long as you can leave your shutter open, the better your chances you’ll capture a lightning strike! In order to keep your shutter open for 10-30 seconds, you’ll need to adjust your camera and lens settings to allow less light from getting to your sensor.

With a digital camera you can experiment a little bit while on-scene to measure the amount of natural light – and then remember that lightning is all “highlights” and it’s going to brighten up your scene quite a bit depending on how close you are to it, and how bright the lightning strike itself actually is.

My recommendation is to start with middle ground within your aperture for evening lightning and start out with an exposure time of about 5 seconds. If you’re first photo is to dark then back off your aperture a few stops (say from f/11 to f/9) and try it again. If the natural light you have is really dark – then you can essentially leave your shutter open for extended periods without worrying about sunlight getting in and overexposing your frame, so set your exposure time to 30 seconds and because you don’t want a flash of lightning to overexpose your frame stop down on your aperture, try something like f/22 to start with and then open it up a stop or two if your lightning strike is too dark.

Here is what I typically tell my customers:

• Always use a tripod and trigger the shutter from either an IR remote, or by using a shutter release – your sensor is going to be open and just by touching the camera to release the shutter you will shake the frame and possibly ruin the result.
• Lock the focus at infinity. If you’re close enough to the lightning that you have to focus it in – you’re not going to live to see the photographs anyway.
• Set the exposure speed to the longest time you can allow without overexposing the frame with natural light. Ideally you’ll need at least 10 seconds (during pre-evening if you still have the sun fairly high in the sky but behind some clouds, you might get away with 5 seconds).
• The aperture is always tricky. During daylight hours try a setting such as f/8 to f/11 first. If it’s dark take advantage of it and use longer exposure times with a smaller aperture f/17 to f/22. Always experiment until you get a really good feeling for what you’re doing – with time you’ll be able to “just know” what you need to do for your specific camera.
• When experimenting – try to allow for longer exposure times verses changing the aperture settings. The more time you can leave your shutter open, the better the chance you’ll capture lightning.

Those are pretty basic tips that you’ll get in a lot of lightning photography tutorials – but here are some tips that can take an ordinary lightning photo to an extraordinary lightning photo.

1. Lightning photography is just like any other type of scenic/outdoor photography – you want to tell a complete story, and in order to do so a well-framed shot with an interesting background is needed. You’re background might be a unique cloud structure (if you are so lucky), or it might be an interesting topographical feature such as a mountain, or perhaps even something as simple as a road or field of wild flowers.
2. Study your storm for a few minutes before taking any shots. Identify the areas within the storm that have the most lightning activity and take note that not all lightning is created equal. In fact, no lightning is created equal – if you have a highly active area of lightning then point your camera in that direction. If the lightning is more “cloud to cloud”, or sheet lightning then you’ll likely not have a really bright strike and will do best by using an extremely long exposure to illuminate the clouds.
3. Do whatever you have to do in order to keep your camera as still as possible. There have been situations due to winds that I’ve had to tripod from inside my chase vehicle and roll down the window just enough to get the lens outside – and while the shutter was open I couldn’t even sneeze in fear of camera shake (from the vehicles’ motion).
4. Carry a small paper weight bean bag. What? Every lightning photographer worth his salt will have one in their camera bag. Use this bean bag paperweight by placing it over your lens as close to the camera body as possible – doing so will help stabilize your camera from small tripod shake.

With time and practice your lightning photography skills will improve and when they do you’ll find yourself capturing more great images and less time deleting captures from your memory card without any lightning.

But in general – don’t be afraid to stop down your aperture! Remember lightning is all “highlights” and it is easy to overexpose your frame if you are not careful – so limit the amount of nature light from your background (or foreground as it is) and the lightning will act sort of like a “nature speed flash” to brighten your scene with a well captured bolt included.

But most of all – have fun with it! Lightning photography can be addictive. I love waiting on lightning to strike with my shutter open hoping that in 20 to 30 seconds I’ll have another great image to add to my growing collection. You will too.

Tags: lightning, photography