Lightning Over Harden Valley

By Kaleb Guzman, Assistant Photo Editor

I was in my car leaving campus, listening to the storm in the distance. When I looked up, I saw thunder clouds gathering over the campus; at the same moment, I saw lightning. And then more lightning, and even more. 

I watched for a few minutes before remembering I had my camera on me. Wasting no time, I got it out and found an empty part of the parking lot, aiming my lens towards the storm.

To give an idea on just how much lighting there was, all of these photos were taken in 10 minutes.

To get the photos, I knew waiting to spot a lightning strike and hitting the shutter button would be too slow. By the time I could react and hit the button the strike would already be gone.

How did I get around it, you ask? I recorded a video, setting the camera take 30 photos a second and relying on the odds of one of those frames to capture a photo of a strike. 

After filming the lightning, I reviewed the footage and when a strike appeared I went back frame by frame and saved the best one. Here are the results.