Nature Forces: Photographer Captures Two Lighting Bolts Over The Grand Canyon

Photographers Rolf Maeder, Scott Stulberg and Holly Kehrt planned to take a sunset photographs trip to the Grand Canyon.

After taking the two hours’ drive from Sedona the conditions were not optimal and the air was a bit hazy. Luckily for Rolf, the party decided to take is slow and look for some other viewpoints.

As they were waiting, a lightning storm emerged at the east end of the canyon, providing a perfect lighting show at a safe distance. The fact that the storm was far away, and the cars were nearby for fast escape, allowed them to setup tripods and do some long exposures.

Rolf shares that the photo at the top of this post “was taken at 9pm with a Nikon D800 and a Nikon 24-85mm lens at 24mm, f/8, ISO 400 using a 25 sec. exposure. The long exposure made it possible to catch two lightning bolts with one shot!“

Here is how the evening unfolded, with the storm getting closer and more wild as time progressed.

There is another post detailing the post processing of the photograph. It is pretty interesting to see how the photo (which was very good to begin with) was enhanced over the course of the edit. Particularly, it was enlightening (no pun intended) to see how visible the Chromatic aberration was in the lighting. Here is the before after Chromatic aberration correction:

The full edit is detailed here.

This is a great example on a shoot that did not as planned at all and still produced a great photograph.

[The Grand Canyon Lighting Show via io9]