I so wish I could take credit for this shot, but I can't. A friend, Mike, and I were driving back to Boulder from Denver International Airport after a short business trip. As we drove away from the terminal, we noticed a thunderstorm forming nearby. We saw a couple of great flashes of lightning and I mentioned to him how this summer, it was my goal to capture lightning in a photo and how I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to go about doing so.
As we continued, the lightning started looking more and more spectacular. I told Mike to pull my camera out of my bag and try and take some shots. We both knew that it would be essentially impossible to react quickly enough to depress the shutter button in time after seeing a flash. A lightning strike must be a sub-second event. I had previously thought that a good sturdy tripod and a longer exposure would do the trick - along with a more active storm. I didn't have a tripod, it was too light to try longer exposures, and the storm, while active, was not producing rapid set of lightning strikes.
Nevertheless, Mike fired away. And kept on missing the lightning. But the shots looked cool and he was impressed with the camera. But finally, as we got onto I-70, we saw a very brilliant flash of lightning. I heard the shutter go off, but in my mind I knew it was too late again. But then, almost at the same time, I saw a second strike nearby and I thought that maybe, just maybe, Mike had captured lightning.
He did.
