The above photograph is the instant of lightning in the clouds. Visibility unaided by lightning was now the distance a sack of rocks could be tossed. It was difficult to see more than a few yards and the leading edge of rain was now arriving. This photograph, in its unedited form, depicts only the lightning. I have enhanced it, doing what I could to salvage some of the details.
Photographing a storm, and in particularly lightning, is exhilarating and all-consuming. As the storm neared I suddenly felt the bellow of thunder. I didn’t just hear it, I felt it.
And what’s more, I heard and felt this from behind me. I turned and looked. I had been so engrossed in shooting the camera that I had not noticed the storm encircle me. The thunder that had rattled my teeth was coming from within heavy clouds that were now surrounding me.
So there I was, in misting rain, surrounded by dark rumbling clouds that crackled with lightning capable of reaching 53,540 degrees Fahrenheit. I looked down at the camera in my hands; a piece of electronic equipment.
And that’s when it dawned on me; I’m the tallest thing on this mesa. I’m a lightning rod, that’s what I am!
I made a bee-line for my car. I literally surfed down that 100 feet of steep, loose gravel-like rock stratum that I had laborious climbed. I did it in mere moments.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35.1 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 11.8 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.