Lightning Storm pics - August 25

Last night's lightning storm was spectacular. I was compelled to stay up and photograph it. I drove to a suitably high place in the Cupertino foothills and watched the show until about 2am!



More photos are here .

Those were very cool pics Dean. I live next to the foothill in North San Jose and could see the whole hill lit up many times. The thunder scared the hell out of the neighbor's dog though.

Very cool night.

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Dean those pics are awesome. How do you manage to capture the lighting. I thought it would strike faster than most people can react.

Long shutter speeds. I set my camera on manual mode and played with various exposure times between 2 and 10 seconds. I shot about 60 exposures and only captured a dozen or so actual strikes, the five I posted being the best. I missed quite a few really spectacular ones either while my camera was processing/saving the image or because I just wasn't fast enough on the shutter. Grrr.

Wow...That is a true nature's show!

...I knew it might rain a bit last night, but I had no idea that there was a storm... I heard absolutely nothing.

Good Stuff!!!! Great pics! I love it!!! I was awakened several times that night by that storm!!!
-cbx

Nice pics dean!

I saw a fairly spectacular light show last night from my place but didn't hear a peep. I always though thunder follows lighting?

I was watching from my house until about midnight and really didn't hear any thunder, but there was one close one that woke my butt out of bed at around 2:20am - heard the crackle before the snap and boom. Gotta say it was extremely tame compared to the stuff I got to see when I was working in Texas. Hehe.