Christopher Rowe

On the rare occasion I find myself walking through a photographers gallery, the last I vividly recall being 2009 in Las Vegas -<em> I am thinking somewhere in the Ceasar Palace Forum </em>- I find myself drawn towards the electrifying shots of lightning.

No matter the scenery it is shot in, be it the arid dryness of the Arizonian desert with a lone Saguaro cactus, from the south ridge of the Grand Canyon or an urban city scape, lightning intensifys the photo – it’s rarity being its charm.

It is this rarity that makes taking lightning photographs in the south west of Australia an interesting challenge. For the last few months now I have been regularly watching the WeatherZone lightning tracker, tracing storm movements from the Kimberly region down past Geraldton hopefully through to Perth. Unfortunately, despite the Australian weather being rather chaotic lately, fruitful in ion storm activity, very little of hit has survived so far south, with the majority of storm cells dissipating before reaching Perth.

I suppose in one sense this has been a god send, since these larger storms have often brought mass destruction in the form of wild 300km/h winds, and flash flooding – as experienced first hand by Queensland, New South Wales, Northern Territory and the northern half of Western Australia – almost everywhere but Perth. From a photography perspective however, it has meant very slim pickings.

Less than three months into 2011, I have tracked fewer than five storms as far south as Perth – but even from the radar telemetry you could see just how much the storm had began to dissipate during its approach from the north. In many of these cases by the time darkness had fallen, which presently being summer in Perth means after 7.30pm, any lightning activity had usually all but gone.

In the last days of February, another storm front, like many before it showed promising signs of storm activity. I could only hope that it would last until darkness. Sure enough as anticipated from the radar, the first storm hit Perth at 3.30 in the afternoon, giving the regional suburbs to the north a ‘toes dip’ taste of the cyclonic activity that Queensland suffered in January, bringing furious winds and flash flooding.

Fortunately for me, and many other photographers, a second storm front was lingering to the north, slowly making its approach. I wrapped up work at 5pm and raced home, praying that the storm would continue its approach and not fizzle out. It was by no means a ‘perfect storm’ but I had had enough of waiting on the sidelines, I wanted to get out there where the action was. The hours wait for daylight to finally come to an end seem to take forever, I found myself constantly checking the lightning radar to see how the storm was faring up, had it gone? or was it still brewing? As sunset neared, I packed the tripod and camera gear into the car and raced back towards the city heading for Kings Park – in hope that I will be able to capture the lightning storm behind the city skyline.

I wasn’t the only enthusiast to take this opportunity, I was surrounded by a handful of photographers with the same thing in mind. The storm was indeed rather small by the time it reached Perth, but that didn’t matter to me – as long as the storm had survived. Over the next hour and a half, playing the numbers game, I took over 1500 exposures, in vein hope that at least a small handful of these would contain lightning bolts. Sure enough, out of the 1500, about 4of them contained lightning bolts, perfectly focused, another 20 contained the clouds all lit up with lightning activity, and the remaining 1476 exposures were just of the city.

It was a great learning experience none the less, for I had never with a professional Nikon, taken photos of lightning and had no idea about exposure or f-stops for lightning.

The photo below, for my future record as well as anyone else’s was taken with the following settings:
F-stop f/5  |  Exposure time: 1.6sec   |   ISO Speed: ISO-100
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