Night lightning
My dogs hate thunderstorms, so lightning of any kind is usually not welcome in our home. But recently we experienced a spectacular nighttime lightning storm that was almost totally thunder-free. It eventually turned into a real thunderstorm with rain, wind, thunder and lightning, but for about 20 minutes it was simply a spectacular light show that rivaled the best fireworks extravaganzas.
I decided to see if I could capture any of these vivid bursts of light and, in doing so, found a use for the “burst” mode on my cell phone’s camera. When I press and hold the snap button it produces a series of still shots. In the past this has annoyed me as my natural ham-handedness with the camera has produced multiple shots when I really wanted just one. But with the lightning show all I had to do was point at the sky, hold the button down and then discard the 90% of the shots that were uninteresting. With this technique you are pretty much guaranteed to capture some flashes.
Another flash