Ever since I was a kid, those crackling electrostatic discharges we like to call lightning have been fascinating my mind. The sheer power of the sound it produces and the beauty of the pattern it produces creates a dramatic feel that I just couldn't get enough of. While some kids are afraid and run underneath a table when they start cracking, I would stick my forhead on the window, wait and watch in aw as each lightning discarged its power followed by a big bang.

For some strange reason the sheer power and beauty of lightnings occupies my attention whenever there is a thunderstrom.

As I got my first camera a bit more than a month ago

I finally got a chance to catch these incredible moments showcasing Mother Nature in its Raw form and incapsulate them in a digital medium which will last forever.

All images in this post are my own and were captured two days ago when the geoengineers decided to throw us a little party in form of countless lightning strikes that were lighting up the night skies.

Obviously I cant know exactly how many there were that night but it was in the hundreds and the lightning strikes were hitting almost constantly. Sometimes even turning night into day for a second or two. It seemed like they would never stop so I happily the opportunity to get some amazing snaps!

Do you share my fascinations?

Wan't to find out how to catch these moments on your own?

It's really easy. Every DSLR and mirrorless camera will do the job. All you need to have is obviously a camera, tripod, an incoming lighnting storm and a lot of patience.

OPTIONAL: cable release

Setting up your camera

• Set it to the full manual mode, take control of all the settings and leave nothing on the camera to the decide. Depending on where you expect the lightning to hit focus that far away (I usually go all the was to infinity and pull it back just a touch) that seems to work perfectly for me.

• White balance will depend on the situation. So if there are some city lights you will need to adjust it because they will cause a yellowish/orange glow in the skies. If that is the case set your WB to incandescent and it will kill the orange in the clouds replacing it with a nice shade of deep blue.

• As with any picture you want to get in best quality possible set your ISO to 100. Lightnings and the long exposure will let in enough light on its own so you don't need a high ISO. It would only bring in extra noise and grain that no one likes to see in their pictures.

• Your f stop depends on how much of the scene you want to get sharp. Start with an f of 9 and go up to 13 if you feel like the corners of your images are coming out too soft. F 16 is the highest I would advise you to go to as you will start losing image quality at higher f stops.

• Shutter speed is the most important as it is the one who determines if or if not will you capture that zap of high velocity electrons shooting through the air. The best way to go about shutter speed, that works for me is to put it around 10″ or 15″ but then again it all depends on the situation so let yourself experiment and through a process of trial and error to find a shutter speed that best fit yours.

• Set your camera to Continuous Shooting mode. Not sure about other cameras but for mine if I'm in any other mode, shooting long exposure, after every image it will process it for 5 seconds without allowing me to shoot another. Continuous Shooting eliminates that and I'm able to shoot pictures back to back without a second in between. This is vital, because that couple of seconds that it takes the camera to process the image might be enough for the biggest and most magnificent lightning strike to zap infront of your eyes without you immortalizing it on film.

Capturing those moments

When you finally get that first storm coming in and you are excited as a kid to finally be able to snap it. Set up your camera and get a chair, kick back, light up and relax. This will take quite some time so be patient. Start at 10″ shutter speed and move from there. When you get your first lightning, if it doesn't show enough of it increase the duration of the shutter, if not, reduce it. Adjust your focus and f stop if needed.

When you are happy with your settings and the way the images are turning out just keep shooting one after another until you got the desired amount of lightnings captured.

If you followed my steps

By now you should have a couple decent images of natures staggering power caught in action, congratz! Your camera has done most of the work but the colors are probably messed up so you will need to edit them a bit in post. Touch them up in some post processing software like Lightroom or Photoshop to bring out the desired colors and make them pop. As this is a tutorial on how to capture lightnings not how to edit them I'll leave that for another post as this one would get too long.

How to edit them coming out soon, so stay tuned if that is something you want to know :)

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial

And that you will go out storm chasing and that you will have as much fun with it as I am. Just don't be scared to get wet or dissapointed when you see that 90% of the images are just clouds with no lightning strikes. It is the 10% that counts, the 10% crispy, HQ snaps of lightning tearing through the skies that put things to back to perspective and show you how little and insignificant you are when it comes to the power of nature. It is that 10% that will make your day better and put a smile on your face.

If you already have some snaps of lightning strikes

I would love to see them so feel free to drop them in a comment down below.

If not, go out, have some fun in the rain and return back with some stunning results!