
Capture lightning in a photo
🌍 Anywhere🔄 Repeatable👤 13+
photographynature
Master the art of storm photography by capturing the precise moment lightning illuminates the sky, requiring patience, timing, and often dangerous proximity to severe weather. Use a lightning trigger device or long exposure techniques during storms, but prioritize safety by shooting from covered locations or your car. The most dramatic shots often come from supercells in Tornado Alley during spring and summer.
Difficulty
50/100Medium
💰
Cost
$100 – $2,000
⏱
Time
longer
👥
People
1+
🌳
Setting
outdoor
📅
Season
any
🎒
Equipment
camera, tripod, lightning trigger
People who tried this
“I shoot this last summer. At first my idea was to capture the true thunderstorm timelapse after I failed capturing the lightning with my old Samsung phone and my iPad by just “shooting at the right moment”. So I put my Hero on the tripod and installed it on my window. The interval I used was the shortest one (I can’t remember but it probably was 0.5 or even 1 sec). So in fact every second or half it took a full-res photo. Then I just fell asleep while being tired of waiting and somehow managed to get up 4 hours after. I saw that my GoPro already discharged. After a few days I had time to look what I got. There was 450 or smth like that amount of photos. I scribbled through all of those and found THIS gem, was really happy that this was the first time in my life I captured lightning that big enough (thunderstorms are unfortunately pretty rare in my loc, last time before this there was thunder probably in 2013 last time, when I had no GoPro at all and all I was able to do is to take some “creepy” “white sky” photos and no lightning strikes”
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📍 United States

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