Lightning Photography Guide (2024)
My ultimate guide to photographing lightning
Hey everyone and welcome to my ultimate guide to lightning photography. Here you will find an in-depth deep dive into the knowledge and techniques I’ve acquired from over a decade of chasing storms and photographing lightning.
I'll demystify the exposure triangle when it comes to how to effectively photograph lightning before diving into the settings I use as well as how I approach different scenarios.
I'll also discuss my post processing and development techniques and show you how I make my lightning photos really pop. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a beginner starting out on your lightning photography journey, you'll hopefully learn something useful or glean an unthought tidbit of information.
my lightning photography journey
Any in-depth guide to lightning photography has to start with at least a little bit of history of the author's experience just, if anything, to show he might know what he’s talking about (debatable). Feel free to skip over this bit if you wish (because zzz).
Though I’ve been chasing storms since 2007, I didn’t exhibit a ‘real’ interest in lightning photography until 2013. The image below represents my earliest attempt. It was captured on a now old and battered Canon Ixus perched precariously on a groyne somewhere along Brighton seafront.
It's noisy, over exposed and generally just a bit rubbish. But I loved it and from that moment on I was hooked.
My History of Lightning Photography
A couple of years after that first lightning photograph, I invested in my first DSLR - an entry level Canon 700D - and started chasing storms along the south coast and home counties during the summer months.
They were usually 'high-based', meaning the base of the storm cloud was elevated higher in the atmosphere. This was a requirement if they were to ever make the Channel crossing as sea surface temperatures would ‘cool the fuel’ a storm needs. (The difference between a surface-based storm and an elevated storm and their subsequent ability to make it across a large body of water is a topic for another discussion).
Elevated storms migrating across the Channel taken with the Canon 700D. Love those undulating bases.
After chasing these French imports for a year or so, my ambition grew to investing in a Canon 80D which I still own today. Having acquired some extra lenses, I found myself back in Tornado Alley again the following year following a 5 year hiatus. Here I met Dave and Arron who would subsequently go on to form See Nature’s Fury.
Though 2017 was a poor season overall, it seriously kickstarted my drive to photograph storms and in particular, lightning.
A month after returning home to Brighton from that tour, one of the greatest lightning displays I’ve ever witnessed passed directly over my apartment.
Huge lightning bolts and rainfall from the MCS that crossed Brighton in 2017.
big lightning
At that time I was fortunate enough to be living on the top floor of an apartment block. It had uninterrupted views up and down the coast and out over the English Channel. After studying the forecast for that evening, it was merely a case of sitting on my balcony in the warm summer air and waiting for what would be the mother of all MCS’s to arrive.
As the complex drew nearer, lightning activity appeared to be focused by the presence of a wind farm 8 miles out to sea. Some unbelievably crazy lightning strikes would hit the turbines. To this day I’ve still not seen better lightning than that evening and I would say that this was the moment that arguably cemented my love of lightning photography.
I have been on the hunt ever since, chasing storms and lightning whenever possible.
The presence of the offshore wind farm appeared to focus the lightning as bolts became increasingly CG.
the hunt begins
Persistently honing and developing my photography and my preferred method of lightning capture has reaped some great rewards. To date, though I've seen and captured some great displays, there are 2 images that have stood out thus far and they both occurred in 2019.
The first was during a chase in New Mexico around the town of Hagerman. Timelapsing the slow and steady approach of a supercell, I managed to capture a fantastic strike hitting the end of the highway. The lightning from this storm was atypical of any I've come to expect around New Mexico - tall, straight out of the upper regions of the storm, vibrantly coloured with many branches.
That same year I entered this image into the RMetS Weather Photo of the Year where it made the final.
The other image is this stacked lightning shot of another MCS that passed to the east of Brighton later that same year.
Of all the aspects of chasing and photographing storms, lightning holds a unique fascination for me with its transient, ethereal nature. Every bolt is different and capturing any one of them is like, well…capturing lightning in a bottle.
After a decade of photographing lightning, I want to share with you the knowledge I've built up over those years by writing this in-depth guide to lightning photography.
What is lightning anyway?
Lightning is the resulting spark that occurs when opposing charged regions between cloud and ground break down. The key word here I guess is ‘spark’ as there is a common misconception that lightning can be separated into 2 distinct types - forked lightning and sheet lightning. Truth is, there is no such thing as 'sheet' lightning. What some might call sheet lightning is just forked lightning that occurs within the cloud or behind curtains of rain. What you’re actually seeing then are those areas being lit up from behind by 'forked' lightning. Though this might seem basic to some and shouldn’t need explaining, there is an important consideration to be had here; If you’re out chasing storms and all you can see is ‘sheet’ lightning, then you might want to consider your positioning on the storm. More on this later.
PRINCIPLES OF PHOTOGRAPHING LIGHTNING
Lightning can be inherently tricky to photograph effectively.
It's transient and unpredictable, instantaneous, intensely bright, occurs in a split second and you’ve no idea when it will strike!
Its intensity can vary from bolt to bolt depending on its distance from the observer, how much dust and haze there is in the atmosphere and how much cloud and precip might be surrounding it as well as different storm dynamics and geographical location that can affect the current.
But once you grasp the principle of how to capture it and understand this variability, before long, photographing lightning becomes quite straightforward.
EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEED
My comprehensive guide to lightning photography assumes you are using:
A DSLR camera
A tripod
A remote shutter
I also reference some extra third party equipment throughout this guide, but they're not essential.
Now, with this in mind, I hasten to add that none of the above is strictly necessary - after all, my first lightning photography was captured on a pocket camera - though there is a technique I delve into later that absolutely requires a tripod. What’s important is that your camera allows you control over the different elements of the exposure triangle.
(I’m sure if I’d known more about that back then, I might have taken a better photo.)
You could, therefore, take lightning photos perfectly well with your phone as long as your phone allows you to manually control the camera’s exposure settings.
Which leads me nicely to…
the exposure triangle
What then is the exposure triangle you might ask? Time for a bit of shameless AI….
The exposure triangle is a fundamental concept in photography that explains how three key settings—aperture, shutter speed, and ISO—work together to control the exposure of your photograph. Understanding and mastering these elements is crucial for creating well-exposed images under different lighting conditions.
Aperture (aka f-stop) refers to the size of the opening in your lens through which light enters the camera. A larger aperture (small f-stop number like f/2.8) allows more light to hit the sensor, resulting in a brighter image. A smaller aperture (large f-stop number like f/16) lets in less light, making the image darker.
Shutter speed is the amount of time the camera's shutter is open, allowing light to hit the sensor.
ISO measures the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor to light. A lower ISO (like 100) makes the sensor less sensitive to light, resulting in a darker image. A higher ISO (like 1600) increases the sensor's sensitivity, making the image brighter. While increasing ISO allows you to shoot in lower light conditions, it also introduces noise or grain into the image, which can reduce image quality. It's usually best to keep ISO as low as possible, only raising it when necessary.
These three elements are interconnected. Changing one affects the other two, so you need to balance them to get the correct exposure for your image.
PRINCIPLES OF PHOTOGRAPHING LIGHTNING
When I’m photographing a scene, I’m obviously aware that at some point there’s hopefully going to be a big bright flash in it. Essentially then, I’m exposing for 2 different lighting elements in one photograph - the overall ambient light of the scene itself and the instantaneous bright flash of the lightning.
Which then should I prioritise?
Firstly, I prioritise my aperture setting first and foremost to expose for the brightness of the lightning bolt.
Secondly, I adjust my shutter speed as a direct reflection of what my aperture setting is to expose for the ambient light of the environment.
Thirdly, I adjust my ISO only under specific environmental conditions which I’ll get into later but I almost always shoot at ISO100.
ANALOGY
To understand why I prioritise my aperture setting, here is a simple analogy for you to help you get to grips with photographing lightning. Hopefully it will help you understand why you too should prioritise your aperture setting over the other two.
Imagine you’re photographing a big dark storm cloud and you’re poised, waiting for that lightning to strike. The exposure length (i.e. the length of time your shutter speed is open for) could be 1/100th of a second or it could be 10 seconds. The lightning flash occurs in 1/1000th of a second. This means that, regardless of shutter speed, the amount of light from the lightning flash that hits the sensor will be the same in both instances regardless of how long you hold the shutter open for.
Therefore, in order to correctly expose for the brightness of the flash, it is my aperture setting that I allow to dictate how bright or how dim that flash will appear in my image.
With my aperture set to expose for the lightning, I then rely on my shutter speed - as a corollary to my aperture - to expose for the ambient light in the scene. The length of my shutter speed should be set accordingly to keep the exposure triangle balanced.
ILLUSTRATE
Let's see if I can’t illustrate all of this better with a bunch of crude diagrams.
Imagine both images below were shot with my lens’ aperture open at f/8. The image on the left was shot with a shutter speed of 1/100th of a second. The image on the right was shot with a shutter speed of 10 seconds. The lightning flash occurred in 1/1000th of a second.
Note how in both images, the brightness of the lightning is the same but the ambient light is brighter in the image on the right due to the longer shutter speed. Remember, the speed of the lightning strike is too fast to be affected by the length of my shutter speed (unless I shoot at some crazy speed like 1/2000 sec).
Remember, as a result of adjusting my aperture, I will then need to adjust my shutter speed accordingly to balance the exposure triangle and keep the ambient light from the environment correctly exposed. (in this case, as I’ve widened the aperture to f/4.5, the shutter speed has a shorter duration, else I risk over exposing the scene).
I find the best way to determine what my shutter speed should be is with my camera’s histogram. With my aperture set, I simply dial in my shutter speed until I get a balanced histogram. I have a tendency to ETTR (Expose To The Right) whenever possible to make sure my sensor is getting as much light information as possible.
Obviously, it's also important to remember that with a longer shutter speed comes a risk of motion blur in the scene. This can either be from movement of the camera itself or from wind blown vegetation such as trees and grass. In order to compensate, or if I feel I’m ‘dragging’ my shutter too much, then I will increase my ISO, remembering to decrease my aperture in the process. Only in extremely overcast situations have I had to do this though and rarely above ISO200-250. Night time hours are a different matter.
Of course, you might want everything in your scene to be as sharp as possible. The method of ensuring this is outlined in some of the methods discussed here.
For now, the information you’ve learned above should be a great jumping off point.
VARIABILITY
Now that you’re familiar with the principle of how to photograph lightning, let's delve a little deeper.
Distance, duration, storm mode, atmospheric conditions such as haze and dust, precip from the storm itself, the amount of current running through the channel and what the storm itself is doing (i.e. is it producing smooth laminar bolts or monster forks out of the anvil?) all play a part in this variability either in isolation or in combination.
Gauging this amount of variability simply comes down to experience of which I find the biggest of these challenges tends to be distant lightning with thick haze at night.
Not all lightning strikes are created equal either - some lightning strikes are brighter than others, whilst some persist for longer than others. If all lightning strikes lasted 1000th of a second and were all of equal brightness then photographing lightning would be a lot easier.
Whereas 1/1000th of a second might sound very quick, a lightning strike can sometimes be even half that duration, and therefore appear dimmer in your photography, or many times that duration, appearing brighter.
Elevated bases and low tops were noted from this MCS which was likely more castallanus than cumulonimbus. The elevated base of the storm means there are more ice particulates which leads to increased electrification. Note the dimness of the bolt due to distance, haze and precip.
time for another diagram
Imagine your aperture is open at f/7.1 A lightning strike that lasts 1/1000 second will not give you the same result as a strike that lasts 1/100 of a second - regardless of shutter speed - because as you should know by now that brightness is persisting for longer and is therefore being exposed to your camera’s sensor for longer. It might only be fractionally longer in the grand scheme of things, and if the lightning is captured during clear daylight hours, the difference might not be so noticeable.
During darker hours though, it most certainly will be due to the reduction in ambient light and the resulting increase in contrast.
I hasten to add that lightning tends not to vary so wildly from strike to strike within a single storm. Obviously there will always be some fluctuations but such wild variations occur on the synoptic scale from environment to environment. For example, a supercell in New Mexico is likely shooting out super speedy positive CGs compared to the lengthy strobed anvil rippers from the MCS raging through southern Oklahoma.
If you want to become a serious lightning photographer, then then studying storm modes and morphology can reap dividends.
DIFFERENCE
To illustrate how certain atmospheric conditions, coupled with different kinds of lightning, can affect your exposure, take a look at these two photos below which were taken several moments apart. They’re of the Morton, TX supercell in 2022.
Ignore the aesthetics of how one image is brighter than the other (they were processed almost a year apart). Note how in the image on the left, the lightning is perfectly exposed but the lightning in the image on the right is a little blown out and therefore overexposed.
Why is this?
This is due to a combination of three separate factors:
- The lightning in the image on the right is much closer. It was shot at 24mm which distorts the perspective so the bolt is actually a lot closer than it appears in the photo.
- The lightning in the image on the left is not only more distant but is also partially obscured by the dust this supercell was famous for. As the majority of the lightning was striking in and around close to the updraft, it was this I was exposing for.
- The lightning in the image on the right has a lot more current running through it and is many times more powerful and therefore brighter than the more ‘regular’ bolts the storm was throwing out.
METHODS
Now that I’ve explained the principles, let’s look at the variety of methods you can try when it comes to photographing lightning.
Which one you pursue may well come down to aesthetic choice above all else.
LIGHTNING TRIGGER
Arguably the most popular choice if you're a dedicated lightning photographer is to use a lightning trigger. A lightning trigger is a small device that plugs into your camera and slots into the hotshoe. It senses sudden changes in light levels and tells the camera to take a shot when it detects a strike. This sensitivity can be adjusted so it can detect even faint distant strikes but a degree of finesse is sometimes needed to gauge that adjustment. I've watched as the trigger is sometimes prone to firing off random 'empty' shots, especially during daylight hours. Other times I’ve seen it miss strikes completely.
I hasten to add that I myself don't own a lightning trigger but the issues mentioned are ones I've witnessed in the field with fellow chasers. On one occasion the trigger / camera pipeline simply wasn't quick enough to react. (Again, I'm looking at you New Mexico.) The Hagerman supercell of July 2019 fired out bolts so quickly that the trigger simply couldn't react in time. I even shot video of this storm and half the bolts didn't even show up. Though this isn't really a 'fault' per se of the trigger, it does highlight limitations in this method though not every storm is going to throw out bolts as fast as the Hagerman one.
Just look at how vibrant and colourful the bolt is from this lightning shot from the Hagerman, NM supercell. It struck so quickly that the lightning trigger couldn't react in time. This shot was taken using my preferred method of timelapsing and you can view this image over at my 2019 storms gallery.
HIPFIRE METHOD
The good old hipfire method of shooting and hoping does make me laugh as photographers crouch in front of their cameras with the shutter ratcheting away like an AK-47. Its arguably the best method though if image sharpness and fidelity are your primary concern. There’s certainly no denying the results when you capture that bolt.
Basically, you set your camera to high speed continuous shooting mode. When you think there’s going to be a strike, simply hold down the shutter button until there is one. Conversely, you wait until a strike occurs and you pray you have ninja reflexes (not a hope if you’re shooting in New Mexico).
If lightning is frequent and consistent enough then you can hazard a guess as to when a strike will occur. Then you just fire away until one does. Sometimes, on rare occasions, the storm might be generous enough to give you a little precursor to a ground strike by first rippling through the cloud deck. You might even get one of those super-charged positive strikes that discharge multiple times down the same channel. In this instance you'll have plenty of reaction time to open the shutter.
If you use this method then I imagine you’re probably opting for a faster shutter speed so as to retain image sharpness. You'll definitely have to use a fast shutter speed if shooting hand-held. Storms by their nature tend to generate windy environments so a longer exposure will mean wind-blown elements in your scene are inevitably going to be blurred. The downside to faster shutter speeds is that travelling bolts can be fragmented. You can always combine those shots later in post though.
Some modern smartphones can work well in this example as they now shoot ‘motion’ photos. Motion photos are short video sequences that capture a few seconds of action before and after the shutter is pressed. Simply press the shutter button when you see a lightning bolt and Bob’s your uncle - the lightning will hopefully have been caught in one of the ‘before’ shots.
Admittedly the only time I've ever used the hipfire method to capture lightning and even then it was unintentional. I was hunkered down behind the car sheltering out of the wind and rain to capture an ordinary shot of the storm. You can view this image over at my Storms USA 2022 Gallery.
TIMELAPSE METHOD
Timelapse is when you take a series of photos at a set interval for a certain duration. For example, when I'm timelapsing a storm I'll take a single shot every second until I've taken about 300-400 photos. This gives me roughly 10 seconds of footage when played back at 30fps. To achieve this, your camera needs an intervalometer function. If it doesn't have one then you can attach a 3rd party intervalometer device such as this one from LRTimelapse.
Timelapse has always been my preferred method ever since sitting on my balcony back in 2017. I got fed up with forgetting to press the remote shutter after each exposure. Simply dial in your exposure settings, set up the lapse, then sit back and enjoy the show. The downside of this method though is the number of bolts that can fall between exposures. Both my Canon R6 and 80D only have a minimum of a 1 second interval meaning that it will wait a whole second after the last shot is taken before the next shot is taken.
Do you have any idea how annoying it is the amount of bolts I’ve seen fall within that 1 second?
Third party timelapse devices like the aforementioned one from LRTimelapse can overcome this by allowing you to use faster intervals. Admittedly this is extra cost on top of what is likely to be an already expensive outlay. I’d recommend checking it out however if you’re serious about your lightning photography.
Don't worry if your camera doesn't have a timelapse function or your budget doesn't extend to buying an additional controller as there is a redneck solution you might want to try. Get hold of a cheap remote shutter release (I use this one), dial in a longer exposure setting and simply lock down the button on the remote shutter. This has the advantage of there being no intervals between shots so you won't miss out on that thundery magic. The downside however is that you're forced into using longer shutter speeds to slow down your capture rate. If your camera doesn't have an intervalometer function then it likely has a smaller image buffer. If it has a smaller image buffer then less photos can be taken before that buffer becomes overloaded regardless of memory card capacity.
I much prefer the timelapse method of capturing lightning as not only can I capture vibrant images such as this, but I can also sit back and watch the show unfold.
LONG EXPOSURE
I thought I'd give this its own section though you'll probably combine this method when timelapsing storms at night. To clarify, by long exposure I'm referring to a shutter speed of about 5 - 10 seconds or more.
Traditionally, photographers generally like to use longer exposures as it allows you to capture multiple bolts in a single exposure to create the barrage effect in-camera (as opposed to stacking in post). As your aperture will be set to capture the brief, bright flash of the lightning as described previously, the shutter can be held open for longer to expose for the much darker ambient light.
Shooting longer exposures comes with its own unique problem however. Take a close look at the following image…
The inherent problem of using longer exposures to capture lightning; as the cloud moves and evolves between strikes - even if just a couple of seconds apart - the same area of cloud can be illuminated multiple times creating a multiple exposure effect.
the long exposure 'problem'
Notice the pattern of the cloud across the middle of the screen and how it appears to have 'doubled up'. This occurs due to the evolution of the cloud during the length of the exposure. In this instance, at the beginning of the exposure there was an intercloud lightning strike which lit up certain areas of the storm. This was followed by a CG strike at the end of the exposure which illuminated those same areas again. The cloud has obviously evolved in between lightning strikes and thus you get a kind of stacked, double exposure effect.
This is often an inherent issue when you're stood some distance from the storm with the full storm in view. Multiple lightning strikes caught within a long exposure can inevitably 'cross contaminate' the same areas, illuminating them up several times.
Longer exposures also increase the risk of camera shake from the inflow / outflow regions of a storm. That same wind field will also inevitably blur any grasses or trees etc in the foreground.
CONSIDERATIONS
In addition to all of the above, if it wasn't already lengthy enough, there are a couple of other things that are worth considering.
DURATION
Sometimes the duration of a lightning strike can be too long. As I mentioned previously, the lightning might ripple through the cloud first before emerging from the storm. If you’re using a lightning trigger for example, it will detect that initial increase in light through the cloud and open the shutter before the bolt emerges from the cloud. If it's the case of a bolt travelling a long distance, then the trigger might catch the start of the bolt but not the end.
You can overcome this by setting a delay timer on the trigger. This will cause it to wait a fraction of a second before firing. Alternatively, you can just make sure you use a longer exposure, the pros and cons of which I’ve already outlined. If I remember correctly though, the trigger can also keep firing off multiple shots for the duration of the strike as long as it's still detecting light level changes. If the strike lasts longer than than your shutter speed then the lightning trigger will still detect the light and thus fire again. You can then combine these separate images in post.
STORAGE
This is a consideration more for the hipfire method. In order to capture as many frames as possible, you’ll preferably need a camera with a high fps rate. My Canon R6 can shoot at a burst rate of 20fps which is more than enough. The major issue here though comes down to how much storage you have. You’ll obviously need a fast storage card to deal with all that continuous throughput and plenty of cards in reserve because all those 'empty' shots will soon mount up.
If you opt for the timelapse method, then you will definitely need plenty of fast storage as even taking a photo every second can overwhelm the write speed of some slower cards.
Summertime 'airmass' or 'pulse' thunderstorms over the Sussex Weald
MY CAMERA SETTINGS AND MY APPROACH
So what is the ideal aperture to choose?
What helps me in my choice of aperture is the knowledge that, with the brightness of almost a trillion lumens and a temperature 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun, a lightning bolt just isn’t something I should be trying to ‘correctly’ expose for, so why even try?
To be clear, you can correctly expose for a lightning bolt so that it isn’t overexposed. You do so by choosing a very fast shutter speed and using either the hipfire or lightning trigger methods mentioned above.
The ambient light from the rest of the scene though would be badly underexposed using these methods. And if using the timelapse method the shutter would need to be held open for a lot longer, sacrificing image sharpness.
Also, when exposing in this manner, the bolt loses its impact and lustre.
Lightning bolts end up looking translucent and ghostly, which may be the aesthetic choice you’re aiming for, but then you miss all the stunning colours in the aura and in the branches.
It is that aura and those colours that I expose for.
COLOUR, AURA & BRANCHES
To me, a successful lightning photo will reveal the central bolt to have a colourful, vibrant aura and the branches to be all manner of blues, reds and violets. It has impact.
My approach centres around being able to hold the aperture open for as long as possible to maximise my chances of catching a strike whilst not overexposing the sensor to ambient light.
Ironically then, my choice of aperture often comes down to shutter speed.
Imagine it's not lightning you’re trying to capture with your camera but butterflies with a net. If your aperture is the size of your net then your shutter speed is the amount of time you can hold that net aloft. The larger your net, the greater chance you have of catching those butterflies, small and large (bright or dim). The longer you can hold that net aloft, or keep your shutter open, the longer you have to use that chance.
Equally, I don’t want my shutter held open for too long else I risk losing image sharpness or introducing too much motion blur.
bolt thrower
f/11
1/2 sec
ISO100
In this shot, I'm essentially exposing for the sunlight behind the rain curtains in the lower half of the image. The 1/2 second exposure allows the sensor to absorb enough light from shaded areas so the information can be recovered in post. The bolt remains beautiful, crispy and colourful. You can view this image over at my 2022 Storm Gallery
PROXIMITY AND OBSERVATION
Knowing then that the bolt will be too bright to expose for, it's all about minimising that overexposure so as to effectively capture the aura of the strike and the colours in the branches.
I keep my aperture within the ‘sharp’ range - anywhere from f/7.1 to f/16. I adjust this value depending on how close or distant the lightning is striking (and therefore how bright it is likely to be), stepping down the aperture the closer the lightning gets.
This aperture range serves a number purposes. Not only does it help minimise the over exposure of the lightning and thus bring out the colours, it also allows me more freedom to drag the shutter.
It's then a question of trade off between how long I can drag the shutter whilst maintaining image sharpness.
It's also equally important to pay attention to what the storm is doing. What kind of bolts is it throwing out? How much current is there? Are the bolts positive or negative? Are they super quick or strobing? Are they CGs or intercloud? All of these points must factor into your choice of aperture.
comin' ta getcha
f/16
1/4 sec
ISO100
Even with a small aperture, the main bolt is beginning to overexpose whilst the branches are all perfectly colourful, crispy and correctly exposed. The storm is almost upon us in this shot so the lightning is pretty close, hence its more intense appearance. This was also shot in New Mexico though where those positive anvil CGs are just something else! You can view this image over at my 2019 Storm Gallery.
NIGHT AND DAY
You'd be forgiven for thinking that, as the energy emitted by lightning is more or less the same regardless of the time of day, then the same aperture can be used whether day or night.
Not so.
The reason for this is something I intend to explore further, but is essentially down to the additive nature of sunlight with increased ambient light levels in the scene 'adding' to the brightness of the lightning.
The aperture setting I choose for daytime lightning will not be the same for lightning striking at night, or even in the evening hours.
During daylight hours I also usually have a polarizer attached which has the effect of reducing light levels by a stop or 2. Even then, my aperture is typically stopped down to between f/11 - f/16, adjusting it according to the storm’s distance, environment atmospherics etc.
As the scene becomes more overcast or as ambient light levels drop, then I open up the aperture some more, usually about f/7.1 - f/11, again dependent on the proximity of the storm. If it's really overcast, then I’ll cautiously bump up the ISO to 200 rather than open the aperture further. I’m not too concerned that the scene might look a little underexposed as the shutter speed will have been open long enough for the sensor to have absorbed enough ambient light which I can recover in post.
At night, I open the aperture all the way up and only now do I really bump up the ISO, again according to the storm’s distance, amount of haze etc. This is when I have to be most careful as it is all too easy to overexpose the lightning. Just a couple of f-stops can make the difference between luminous, colourful bolts and a fully blown out image.
During twilight, night time hours I can really drag the shutter, holding it open for about 5 - 10 seconds or more. I’m not worried about motion blur here either because as lightning acts as a flash, it brings the scene into sharp relief.
Light is largely flat and uniform across the scene in daylight settings from this crop of a much larger image. This allows for lightning photography to be a fairly straight forward process. The fairly weak negative bolt isn’t overexposed and its vivid magenta glow shines through.
Fourplay
f/7.1
15 sec
ISO100
The trailing stratiform area of an MCS, like this one over Brady, TX, is one of the best locations to capture lightning. My wide angle lens gives the impression the storm is quite distant when in fact it was very close, reflected in my choice of exposure settings.
levelland
f/4.5
10 sec
ISO400
Care needs to be taken when photographing lightning at night as it's easy for bright areas of cloud or precip to become overexposed. Although the storm was almost on top of us, the lightning was still fairly dim - obscured by the thick red dust - hence the wide open aperture and increased ISO. You can view this image over at my 2022 Storm Gallery.
fast or higher?
Only under certain conditions will I use a 'fast' lens with an f stop of 2.8 or more. Occassions for this are when the storm is distant and / or in a very muggy environment where the illuminating effects of the lightning are diminished.
In the image below taken near Dodge, KS, I used a 50mm focal length wide open at f/4. Sadly it was nowhere near enough to capture the lightning and cloud flashes which were muted by humidity and distance. Even with the ISO bumped up to 1600, its still not enough. A real shame because its a very atmospheric image.
Given the choice of using a faster lens over increasing my ISO, I will always opt for a faster lens.
dodge
f/4
10 sec
ISO1600
An occassion where I wished I'd used a faster lens was this distant storm near Dodge, KS. Even with the aperture wide open at f/4, the intracloud lightning is barely visible; hidden within the cloud and behind a thick soupy haze. Even with a high ISO, the exposure had to be cranked right up in post resulting in a very noisy image. You can view this image over at my 2022 Storm Gallery
The perils of using a fast lens in combination with increasing the ISO however are evident in this pair of images below. A tricky combination of distance, changing light conditions and lightning that was striking in and around the precip core made for a storm that was difficult to expose for. For the most part, my exposure settings of f/2.8 at ISO640 worked well for the lightning hidden deep within the cloud and the forward flank core for a storm that is somewhat distant. But as soon as the lightning struck immediately in front of the precip, it's overexposed. In these instances, lowering the ISO to 200-400 would probably have worked better. In these situations, the balance is a precarious one.
IN THE FIELD
On top of everything else, you also have to consider the effects the environment will have on you.
First of all, and this shouldn't need saying, photographing lightning is inherently dangerous. Hands down it is the most hazardous aspect of chasing a storm. NEVER stand under or near tall objects or trees if a storm is directly overhead. Do I even need to state this?! Don't make yourself the tallest object either and certainly don't stand on top of a hill! Even if you're some distance from the storm, lightning can reach out and grab ya, especially if the storm is raining down those silly bolts out of the anvil.
elements
Storms can inherently be wet and windy affairs. Be aware then that raindrops will inevitably make it onto your lens. Attaching a lens hood can help mitigate this but can transform your camera into a sail during windier conditions. This is where you need to make sure your camera is securely attached to the tripod head. There should be little to no give and that the tripod itself should be sturdy. I’ll usually splay the tripod legs out one notch further with 2 of those legs facing downwind. Ideally, you’d have the camera as low to the ground as possible by shortening the legs and splaying them out. However, this is rarely practical when it comes to your composition. Never extend the centre column of your tripod if it has one - that's just asking for trouble.
Pop up storms that form on hot and humid summer days can be the exception. Around them the air often feels “close” and “still”. This is due to the lack of wind to ‘mix out’ the atmosphere. Wind and rain from these storms tends to exist solely in the vicinity of the storm.
Being stood out in the open exposes you and your camera to the elements. Not only do you have to shelter from the wind and the rain but also that most dangerous thing you’re trying to photograph – lightning.
positioning
I find positioning myself in the right place around a storm provides the biggest hurdle to overcome. Good road networks are essential for effective positioning which is why chasing storms in the UK is so poor. Having to factor in an interesting foreground with meaningful composition around where lightning is most likely to occur is an incredibly difficult task and often comes down to luck.
‘Knowing’ a storm can help in this regard. An educated guess can be made as to the direction the storm is heading. The region of the storm where lightning is most likely to occur can also be guessed at. Then you just hope the storm is slow moving and long lasting enough for you to be able to position yourself accordingly. You just have to hope there’s some visual interest when you get there.
Here in the UK, I find that the best strategy is not to chase per se. Instead I position myself beforehand where I have a composition in mind in an area where storms are forecast to track over. Rarely will a storm be so kind but this is when knowing where storms occur most often and then getting to know that area pays dividends. For example, MCSs in the summer months frequently make their way over from the continent to the southern shores of the UK. They then track north east in the direction of Kent and East Anglia. CAMs (Convection Allowing Models) are so good now that they can predict roughly when and where a storm is likely to occur. You can and should use this guidance to your benefit.
location knowledge
Coastal areas are a great option as there’s always foreground and compositional interest due to the rugged nature of the coastline. The UK certainly has a lot of it so positioning shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Failing that, bodies of water such as lakes and reservoirs where reflections can compensate for any lack of visual interest. Mountainous areas can certainly offer arguably the most dramatic views but navigating around them is problematic and positioning can be fraught with risk.
Winding country roads (assuming you can find somewhere in the UK to pull over) are also relatively easy to come by and who doesn’t love an ‘end of the road’ shot? Navigating them though can often be a frustrating experience. South eastern counties, where trees and hedgerows are an absolute blight on visibility and accessibility, make for horrendous chase country. The same can be said for the hills and forests east of I35. With this in mind, which probably only applies to chasing in the UK, smaller cars allow far greater accessibility when navigating around country roads. Being able to pullover in front of a farmer's gate is a lot easier in a hatchback and doesn't block the road like a 4x4 would or a van.
radar and satellite
Storm modes and chase strategies, especially around the UK, are probably outside the scope of this blog. However, there is a quick way in which you can tell where lightning is occuring most around a storm. Online radar tools from Meteogroup and Netweather can be a huge benefit in helping you navigate yourself into the best position around a storm as they indicate where lightning is in relation to the precip.
In the image above, you can clearly see a tight cluster of sferics on the leading edge of a couple of thunderstorms pushing towards Reading. If you look closely you can see that the strikes are occuring in front of the darker coloured returns. This indicates they're falling slightly ahead of the updraft column and maybe photogenic. Best photography location in this instance looks to be to the south or south west out of the rain where the skies are clearer.
The downside is that they're not realtime, with updates coming every 10-15 minutes, but this shouldn't matter so much. If it does then you can always refer to either Lightningmaps or Blitzortung which show lightning 'sferics' in realtime. Neither has radar or satellite overlay but it should be fairly straight forward to cross reference.
Post-processing
In this section I’ll refer mostly to stacking techniques in Photoshop. This includes how to avoid the issues that stacking lightning photos often presents such as when shifts in hue and overexposure create ugly artifacting that can go unnoticed. The reason for this comes not from the lightning bolt itself, but where areas of cloud or precip have been brightly illuminated by bolts of different temperature and intensity.
Check out the image below which consists of 9 seperate shots from the 2019 MCS that passed just east of Brighton. All the layers are stacked using just the 'Lighten' blend mode.
Looks absolutely horrendous doesn't it?! And if you think it doesn't, then you need help!
The first thing to note are the 3 distinct colour palettes in the scene. The lightning below the cloud base has a distinct orange / peach hue. The lightning above the cloud base has a pink hue and the post blue-hour cloud has a deep blue colouring. Some very ugly haloing has occured around the lightning strikes, specifically the ones below the cloud base.
The reason this occurs is because the Lighten blend mode analyses the luminance values of the pixels in all the layers of your image. It then 'keeps' the brightest ones in your chosen layer/s so that they're the only ones visible. In this image the haloing occurs where the luminance falloff of these different colours overlap. Some of the luminance values of the lightning bolts in the left half of the image aren't very strong either allowing them to be washed out.
There is a secondary issue as well which is the doubling up of the cloud base. Given that the shots in this stack were taken over a period of several minutes, the cloud base has evolved and migrated from the right of the image toward the left.
So how do we clean up this image and make it more appealing?
starting point
First of all, I go through all 9 images in the stack and choose the one I think works best as the base image to start from. This image to the left I feel works strongest, especially with the underlit cloudbase, but I can see there being a potential problem with the extent of that precip glow. Notice how the glow from the CG on the left is orange but the glow from the base crawler on the right is a light pink. Stacking other lightning bolts into that glow will definitely cause haloing, so how do we get around that?
choosing layers
Firstly, lets make life easier and reduce the layer count so that the composition is a bit more balanced. That way we don't have as many layers to process either. The lightning bolts to the right and left are haloing strongly into that middle precip glow and the mid level crawler, whilst very striking (sic), is also a little too overpowering. There is also still some pronounced doubling up in the forward cloud base.
Some simple layer masking can clean up most of the doubling effect but the glow from the mid level crawler is still quite overpowering. The rain fall above it has visual interest but below it is quite bland and heavy.
luminosity masks
Let's tackle this layer by layer and for this I'll need to use luminosity masks of which I'll be using Jimmy McIntyre's Easy Panel 2.0 to generate for each layer.
For the uninitiated, luminosity masks are simply that - masks created from the luminosity of the image which are traditionally divided into the 3 tiers of 'brights', 'mids' and 'darks'. In the case of blending the various lightning layers in this image, I will generate a series of 'brights' for each layer using Easy Panel 2.0.
For example, generating a series of 6 'brights' for the base layer gives me the following masks which are incrementally more revealing with each iteration from the brightest pixels toward mid range pixels:
I can then either use these masks directly or adjust them further with a curves adjustment to really fine tune how much masking takes place.
The differences between the 2 images above (before on the left, after on the right) are subtle and the lightning bolt on the left was a little too dim to pull much luminosity information from, but it is brighter now (you might need to squint). The middle bolts have also been nudged up a little.
The next layer adds another bolt to the centre of the image but with a big glow fall off. This was a simple case of masking off the ugly haloing area highlighted in the image on the left. The extra bolt in the middle has equal luminosity values to what is already there so fits in perfectly.
Dropping the bolts in on the right adds balance to the image now but the strength of those bolts is maybe a little too much and draws attention to itself. I'll decide later if I want to keep it or not. The glow in the 'before' image on the left is pretty ugly but some luminosity masking and colour correction sorts that right out.
Time to tackle the big crawler. As I mentioned earlier, the area of precip above the lightning has some visual interest I can use and spars nicely with the blue tones on the right but below the strike itself is overbearing. The 'after' image on the right shows how selectively editing a luminosity mask has allowed me to remove all the pink glow from beneath the cloud base. However, the inclusion of this layer as a whole means removing some of that forward cloud base which I quite liked so I might have to review this later.
Adding in another bolt on the left helps to bring more weight to the image and compensate for the fairly weak bolt on the far left. Again, a luminosity mask reduces the ugly haloing but its not perfect mainly because of the pattern of the precip crossing over the bolt makes it look like a blending anomoly so might have to review this also.
balance
Lets balance the overall image now by adding in the layer with the bolt on the far right. Its a faint bolt, matching the low intensity of those on the far left which is a happy accident, and in order to avoid the haloing that pushes into the brighter bolts to its immediate left, I've had to choose a luminosity mask that reduces that precip glow substantially.
Though I feel there's now a nice overall weight and balance to the image, there's still room for improvement; those bright bolts 2nd from the right are maybe a little too overexposed and in correcting the luminosity of the precip glow, now has a colour cast that doesn't match the rest of the image. I'm not happy with the bolt on the far right either as, though its dim overall, the bolt still stands out unnaturally from the precip.
Adding a deep red photo filter corrects the colour of those bolts on the right and makes for a more harmonious image.
I feel the lightning bolt on the far right doesn't quite work so I've replaced this with something more sympathetic and now I feel the entire image has a more harmonious balance about it.
A final quick curves adjustment and some targeted contrast in the upper levels of the cloud and we have a final image.
thank you
If you have made it this far; Thank You!
Granted, it's not the most amazing image in the world. The bolts were somewhat distant and shrouded in precip making for 'difficult' conditions. Hopefully though I have illustrated how you can make a purse out of a pig's ear.
If you have any questions or feel you have have anything to add, then please contact me. The best way to do this is to drop me a message over on my Facebook page. Your feedback and interaction is always welcomed and appreciated. Of course, if you have any lightning photos to share then please do so.
CHEERS!
Comments are closed.
