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!