Lightning Storm!

The summer monsoon season in the desert southwest is a wonderful time. It gives the region life-sustaining rain. At the same time it gives photographers a vast treasure trove of beautiful sunsets, rainbows and (my favorite) lightning.

Last night there was an impressive lightning display in and around Tucson, Arizona and I was able to catch the show from my back yard. Lightning is easiest to photograph when it is dark and when the storm is relatively far from you. This puts the lighting in one general direction (helping you to know where to point your camera) and keeps the danger at a minimum.

My first catch of the evening wasn't all that impressive as the lightning bolt was too far away, but things got better. Except where noted, all exposures were 30 seconds.

Two 30-second exposures combined in Star Stax

I decided to try a new direction and caught two shots (combined above) and realized that I was pointing in the wrong place and that the real action was just beginning. Below are some of my favorite shots from the lightning display.

I couldn't resist combining all of my images into one mega shot of all the lightning strikes. The combined images represent 22 minutes of exposure. I also dropped the images into iMovie to make a quick time-lapse video. Here is the result:

There's a chance of more thunderstorms tonight through the end of next week. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch some more lightning.

Zap!

Arizona's monsoon season is off to a good start. The summer rains come in the form of thunderstorms and yesterday delivered some pretty decent rains and quite a lightning show.

I wasn't able to get out after dark for any lightning photography but I did manage to capture this shot during the daytime yesterday afternoon:

Hopefully, the weather will cooperate and I'll be able to do some lightning photography after dark, when it is much easier to catch.

Monsoon!

I have lived most of my life in the desert southwest where the air is usually clear and dry. Every summer, usually around Independence Day, the flow of the atmosphere shifts bringing humidity. The heat of the day and instability in the atmosphere generates thunderstorms.

You wouldn't think that someone who loves astronomy as much as I do would welcome our monsoon season, but I do. The clouds pretty much ruin astronomy in July and August. The weather is so bad that the professional observatories in the area usually shut down for maintenance. Even though the monsoons are bad for astronomy they are celebrated. I suspect that most people who have not lived in the desert would understand how everyone here gets excited about just the possibility of rain.

This year's thunderstorms in Tucson kicked off on Monday. Friday was another active day. Here's a time-lapse movie from Friday showing how it looked from the University of Arizona:

It was a pretty good storm. Parts of town got 2-3 inches of rain and the temperature at the airport dropped about 25 degrees. We have yet to get any measurable rain at our place (our time will come, hopefully soon), but this evening we had a wonderful lightning storm.

It was my first time with lightning photography in years. In fact, the last time I shot lightning I was shooting with film (Yes, I'm that old). Needless to say, I am pretty happy with how things turned out.

The trick to lightning photography is to make sure it is far enough away to be safe and that it's dark enough for timed exposures. Tonight was the perfect combination. Lightning is bright enough that setting your camera's speed to something slow, like 100, is perfect. It allows you to take long exposures without overexposing, while giving you plenty of opportunity to catch the lightning in the act.

Personally I like Nature's fireworks a whole lot more than the man-made fireworks of a few days ago. I managed to get a few shots that I liked and I have posted the good ones here.

5 Seconds

8 Seconds

10 Seconds

10 Seconds

To get even more in a shot individual exposures can be combined with a program like StarStaX. Here's the two photos above, and another that had just a little bit of lightning. The resulting image is even nicer.

 Here are a few more individual frames that still look pretty good.

15 Seconds

15 Seconds

15 Seconds

20 Seconds

20 Seconds

20 Seconds

And, if you made it down this far, here are a couple more stacked images. First 4 frames stacked:

And then 8 frames stacked:

I hope to shoot more lightning before the summer rains end and, if I do, you'll be seeing the pics here.