sometimes the Lightning Finds you.

There’s a certain amount of patience that goes into photographing lightning. You watch the clouds, wait for the right moment, set up the camera and hope the storm gives you something worth waiting for.

But sometimes, none of that matters.

A couple of weeks ago at Pueblo Reservoir I was just getting started photographing a distant storm. I knew I wanted the landscape to be a bit on the darker side to give room for the exposure of the lightning flash. Camera is focused, aimed at a dark horizon and the shutter set to 1/50th of a second. All I need was an exposure test before setting up the lightning triggers.

I pressed the shutter.

At that exact moment, lightning exploded across the horizon.

It was completely unplanned. No timer. No prediction. No carefully timed exposure. Just a single click that happened to coincide with a bolt of lightning.

Of course, after that, I spent the rest of the evening trying to capture another one.

Sometimes photography is about preparation and technique. But every once in a while, it’s about being there, pressing the button and getting impossibly lucky.