How to Photograph Lightning using two different methods

Funny enough lightning pictures aren’t that easy to come by, as you need a fair bit of luck and good fortune. But when you do, it’s a pretty great feeling to nail a lightning bolt picture. The two different methods I’ve used to photograph lightning are

1) Point, Aim, Fire

2) Long exposure via a tripod.

Point Aim Fire Method

With this picture here, as a pretty heavy storm hit Sydney, I headed to the coast with the plan on shooting some cool storm pictures over Botany Bay in Sydney.

I just remember standing in the rain on beach and firing away at will aiming towards the sound of thunder, with the hope of jagging something.

It’s not that easy to time a lightning bolt and to record it in your camera. Usually by the time you see a lightning bolt then take a picture it’s all over and you’ve missed it.

The trick is to just be consistently taking pictures every few seconds towards the sounds of thunder and more predicting it than timing it, and with a little bit of luck you’ll jag a lightning bolt.

But if there is a fair bit of lightning activity with many lightning bolts it is possible to photograph lightning using the point, aim, fire method. You just need to be consistently taking pictures into the storm.

Similar to this version here below, I was driving through a pretty heavy storm and the loud claps of thunder were hitting off on the horizon.

So thinking it was a great chance to shoot some lightning I pulled over and started shooting towards the sound of thunder as I stood on the side of the road.

After a few minutes of taking a picture every few seconds towards the thunder, I was lucky to capture this pretty strong lightning bolt. Then it was time to jump back in the car and dry off.

So there’s a couple of examples using the point, aim, fire method which I’ve used many a times in my career. It works pretty well and if you’re lucky it can work out great for you too.

Long exposure method

Another method to photograph lightning is to set up your camera on a tripod and aim towards the storm.

Then using a long exposure of 30 seconds with the hope that somewhere in that 30 second exposure a lightning bolt will hit.

Or you may get multiple lightning bolts to add to a even more dramatic picture. It’s just a case of consistently taking 30 seconds exposures back to back until the storm activity is over.

But sometimes you don’t always have the time for that or access to a tripod when a storm hits, so that’s when the point, aim, fire method can come in handy.

I hope these little tips helps with your pursuit of photographing lightning. It’s a pretty awesome feeling when you do get a great shot.

Til next time!

Chris