September 1st extremely close lightning
I was thinking about chasing locally this day, but things looked crappy in the morning and I blew off any hopes of severe storms. These weren't severe, just some normal thunderstorms that were extremely electric. I was in my dorm and things started to get going just before sunset as a few storms popped up and came through town. I did get one daytime bolt (seen below) that I thought was one of my luckiest shots ever as it was a 1 second exposure and the lightning was very infrequent, little did I know that I'd later witness one that would literally blow this photo up. Oh these are all taken from my dorm room in Lincoln, NE. I'm up on the 13th floor looking east. The view to the west is 50x better, memorial stadium and the campus/downtown Lincoln view, Had this shot been on the other side, I'd be rich lol.
Now It's after 8:30pm and I stopped shooting, but I hear some REALLY close strikes and I scramble to get my camera setup again. I get going clicking away and I get what I think is the shot of the night again.
After the above shot I keep thinking to myself, "still waiting on the extremely close insane-o bolt". Literally right as I'm thinking this I see 5 CGs strike and an explosion! All this happening less than a half mile from me. A transformer blows up and a powerline goes down, two really bright flashes, one that is rather obvious in the middle of the frame and the other is a "green flash" right under the far left bolt. Also note the four positive streamers behind the second from the left bolt. Especially the little one behind the main bolt, Apparently this is pretty rare and I've never photographed it before. About this time my adrenaline is at a ridiculous level, I'm anxiously awaiting the LCD to reveal whether or not the shot was exposed correctly. I figured there was no way it wasn't blown out or overexposed. I about died when I saw how almost perfectly it was exposed. Best shot I've ever taken hands down lol.
This is the only shot of a transformer blowing up that I've ever seen, maybe I just haven't seen a lot of close lightning photos, but I'm guessing that this is a VERY rare event to have captured. So I pretty much should just stop taking photos of lightning now, probably won't ever be able to top this. I will certainly be paying VERY close attention to storms in the area and will try to get some shots looking west with the stadium and campus in the frame.
And here is a zoomed about 100% crop of the positive streamers, gives you a sense of scale that you can see the land behind where the bolt hits the ground lol, the 13th floor is kinda cool in that way.
Now a bit later on, this is a stack of three images. Stacking is kind of ridiculous at times. But it does show just how crazy these storms can be. All the frames in this one were also within 2 minutes of each other.
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