Weather Imagery

Taking pictures of lightning is not nearly as hard as it seems. In fact, it’s actually quite simple assuming you’re taking pictures at night. If you’re shooting during daylight hours, all bets are off. You’ll either need lightning quick reflexes (pun intended) or some very expensive shutter trigger hardware. However, if shooting at night, you do not need a super high end SLR camera body with all the fancy options nor do you need a high end digital camera. The only options you must have on your SLR (single lens reflex) camera are:

• “Bulb” setting for long exposures times
• The ability to turn off auto-focus
• Manual control over F-Stop

Some point-and-shoot type cameras may work but it’s much easier when you have the ability to adjust the above settings.

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While chasing storms on the Colorado plains, I’ve found farms also have a lot to offer photographically. Windmills in particular provide a function to the farm that has been invaluable to farmers for decades. And after years and years of intense abuse, some are still standing today as a relic to the way things used to be. Below are some pictures of farmland I’ve come across while chasing storms in Eastern Colorado.

This was a shot of a distant thunderstorm over the Rocky Mountains just after sunset.

This photo was doctored in no way. The sky really was this color after a series of super cells passed through the eastern plains of Colorado.

I stumbled across this sunflower farm while storm chasing on the plains of Colorado. I’d love to find it again because there were some really good photo opportunities.

The beaches of southern California are not the place for a weather enthusiast. Growing up and living on the beach, I know first hand how boring the weather is. When I moved to Colorado I finally got a taste of what Mother Nature has to offer. The spring and summer months put on great lightning shows almost every day as huge thunderstorms seem to bubble up out of the blue. The cool thing is, the storms here usually produce very little rain and the landscape offers a clear unobstructed view of the awesome lightning shows which make taking pictures easy.

Below are some pictures of lightning I have taken since living in Colorado. Almost all of these pictures are right out my back door (literally) where the storms roll off the Palmer Divide almost every night.

A large lightning strike right outside my back door looking northwest.

A massive lightning strike. With as large as this lightning strike was, I was really lucky to capture the whole thing on film.

A nice lightning bolt right next to a rain shaft. This storm was producing a lot of lightning and just a bit of rain.

I caught this lightning strike on camera just as the sun was setting.

This was one strange lightning bolt. It looks like it might of been two that zig-zagged all over the place.

This house came very close to getting struck by lightning. Nice defined lightning bolt.

This is my first good shot using my new digital camera (Canon Rebel XTi)

Another shot of the same storm a little bit later. This particular storm was shooting quite a bit of electricity.

The great advantage of a digital camera is you can try as many times as you like to capture a daytime lightning strike and it costs you nothing!

The great advantage of a digital camera is you can try as many times as you like to capture a daytime lightning strike and it costs you nothing!

Every aspect of the weather fascinates me, including things as mundane as the clouds. This fascination probably manifested itself early in childhood. Growing up and living the first 24 years of my life on the beaches of sunny Southern California offered little in the way of exciting weather, unless fog excites you. I remember as a kid reading books and seeing pictures of huge super cells and clouds bubbling from beneath and thinking the pictures were fake. Nothing could look that cool and be natural. It wasn’t until I moved to Colorado and saw for myself what Mother Nature had to offer. Below are pictures of some clouds I’ve seen while living here in Colorado. There are more to come.

This storm was popping out 2 inch hail and at one point looked as if it were going to spawn a tornado. I was about 30 miles west of the Kansas and Colorado border on Highway 70.

This was the backside of a huge supercell that passed over Falcon, Colorado. The mammantus clouds were awesome looking!