This was one of 150+ photos I took the evening of July 13th - the night of a massive electrical storm over northern Illinois.

Cloud-to-cloud bolts of lightning struck with constancy for nearly an hour. There was little thunder and where we live in St. Charles, no rain. Without the aid of a lightning trigger device, photographing lightning can be very unpredictable and often disappointing. With enough time to fire a few test exposures, I settled on exposure times of 4 to 15 seconds, which produced a nice grouping of strikes.

Some strikes were violent, long in length across the sky and others more compact. Although I have 20 or so favorites, I like this image in particular because of the overall mood generated by the pattern of bolts emanating from the center of the frame.

Canon EOS 5D, Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 SP Aspherical LD @ 58mm, 5 sec @f/13, ISO equiv 800, Calumet 8000 Carbon Fiber Tripod, Gitzo G1276 Ballhead