Chaos

My boss is a home builder and he just built this house for himself. He asked me to go out and get an evening shot with all of the exterior lights on, so I obliged. Problem was, as you can see, half of the exterior lights didn't come on. I noticed a storm was rolling in and I had no where else to be so I figured I'd watch this storm roll in and just keep taking photos to see if I could get anything cool.

Waiting paid off as the storm had made it's way directly above the house so I set up this composition and just kept shooting as many frames as I could to catch as much lightning as possible to composite later. At the point where I was hearing loud static electric sounds in the air I decided that with my tripod I had set myself up as a lightning rod and it was time to book it. So I made like a banana and split.

Sticking it out payed off big. I got home and started layering everything up and soon realized this image had potential! But not just this one. There were also a lot of photos I took earlier before the sun dropped and the storm rolled in. It was just overcast outside so the entire house was lit up perfectly. I did a pano that I call "Calm" because it is the polar opposite of this image. One is Calm and one is Chaos. Both taken on the same day. Crazy. I got REAL lucky with these images. I have the Other Image posted too.

Image Composite: 6 Photos
Camera: Nikon D800E
Lens: 18-35mm f3.5-5.6
ISO: 100
F-Stop: f/8
Shutter Speed: 30sec for the House shot. The other lightning shots vary between 4 seconds and 30 seconds.