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Fire in the Hole, Grand Canyon Lightning
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Back at it—the chase is on
Every year I schedule one or two (and one time three) photo workshops for the peak weeks of the Southwest US monsoon. Despite the summer crowds (which I’ve become pretty good at avoiding), I’d argue that monsoon season is the best time to photograph Grand Canyon. Given the monsoon’s frequent mix of thunderstorms and sunlight, adding colorful sunrises/sunsets and rainbows to Grand Canyon’s splendor are always a real possibility. And photographing the Milky Way above Grand Canyon is a true highlight for everyone. But despite these undeniable visual treats, more than anything else, foremost in almost everyone’s mind is lightning.
Each time I start with a new workshop group (that is clearly brimming with lightning aspirations), I’m reminded of the first time I tried chasing lightning—both the extreme disappointment of failure, and (especially) the ultimate euphoria of success. So even with hundreds (thousands?) of lightning images to my name, reviving these memories help me live vicariously through the joy and disappointment of my workshop students.
Though (or maybe because) I’ve never lived anywhere that got much lightning, I’ve been fascinated by lightning since I was a child. (Lightning is so rare here, when Californians hear thunder, instead of sheltering safely like sane people, we run outside so we don’t miss anything.) So I guess it makes sense that ever since I picked up a camera, I’ve dreamed of photographing lightning.
In the beginning…
In 2012, Don Smith and I drove to Grand Canyon to try and make that happen. I mean, how hard could it be? Armed with our cameras and virgin Lightning Triggers, on that first trip we endured enough frustration—lots of lightning that for a variety of rookie reasons, we couldn’t seem to capture—our initial dreams of dozens of lightning images became prayers for just one.
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Lightning Strike, Zoroaster Temple and Brahma Temple, Grand Canyon (2012)
Those prayers were answered many times over toward the end of the visit, when a surge in monsoon thunderstorms on and near the South Rim coincided with just enough of a bump in experience (and humility) to equal success. On our last day, so thrilled were we by our South Rim lightning experience, that instead of heading straight home as planned, we detoured four hours in the opposite direction to the North Rim. There, in just a few hours, we captured even more new lightning, more than enough to energize our long drive back to California. I was hooked.
After those beginner’s ups and downs, my lightning success has increased each year. Of course when no lightning happens, there isn’t much I can do about it, but learning to interpret the forecasts (including the fairly technical NWS forecast discussions), understanding the patterns of monsoon storm development and behavior in and around Grand Canyon, increased familiarity with my Lightning Trigger, and (finally) finding an app that reliably alerts me about lightning far outside my range of vision, has significantly increased my lightning success rate.
Lightning Trigger love
For daytime lightning, I can’t overstate the importance of a reliable lightning sensor with range. First, don’t even think about trying to photograph lightning in daylight without a device that detects the lightning and triggers your camera. I know people try the see-and-react technique, but success with this approach is mostly luck—if you do get a bolt, it was almost certainly not the one that made you press the shutter, it was a secondary or tertiary (or later) bolt that followed the initial one. And one of the most common mistakes I see aspiring daylight lightning shooters make is adding an extreme neutral density filter to achieve the long exposures that yield so much success at night. But night lightning shows up because of the extreme contrast between the brilliant lightning against black surroundings; that contrast disappears in daylight, so you end up with a many-second/minute exposure with lightning bolts that last a minuscule fraction of a second, rendering the lightning faint or (more likely) invisible.
Fortunately, the lightning sensor Don and I started with has turned out to be the best, saving us lots of frustration, research, and money. You’ll find many lightning sensor options, most of which I’ve encountered in a workshop, but the only one that I’ve seen work reliably is the Lightning Trigger (though people use the name as a generic, this is the only one that can use it legally). There are fancier sensors, and cheaper sensors, but I’ve found none that combine reliability and range as well as the Lightning Trigger. (I’m not saying that the others don’t work, I’m saying that I’ve never seen any that work as well as the Lightning Trigger, so even though I get no kickback or other benefit from pushing it, the Lightning Trigger is the only lightning sensor I recommend.)
Playing the odds
On a textbook monsoon day, the storms start firing south of the canyon (around Flagstaff and Williams) mid-/late-morning, and move northward as the sun ascends, usually arriving at the canyon late morning or early afternoon. While waiting for the storms to arrive, I rely on my Lightning Tracker Pro app to monitor the approaching activity and get ahead of it, especially when I’m on the South Rim, where my groups stay about 10 minutes from the rim. (It’s easier on the North Rim because our cabins are right at the rim.)
Chasing lightning means obsessive monitoring of weather forecasts. And counterintuitively, my workshop groups have the most success not when the forecast calls for lots of thunderstorms, but when the thunderstorm odds are in the 20 to 40 percent range. That’s because Grand Canyon has a multitude of the vistas with broad, distant views up, down, and across the canyon. These views, combined with the Lightning Trigger’s incredible range (I’ve used mine to capture daylight lightning more than 50 miles away), enables us to safely photograph distant storms—storms usually so far away that we don’t hear the thunder.
So a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms means that (very roughly) 20 percent of the forecast area will get lightning, so it’s usually not difficult to stand on the rim and find lightning happening somewhere within the Lightning Trigger’s range. On the other hand, when the forecast calls for a 50 percent or higher chance of thunderstorms, we do indeed get much more rain and lightning, but usually there’s too much to photograph safely because you never want to be photographing the storm you’re in.
Let’s go fishing
As thrilling as chasing lightning might sound, it’s really about 95 percent arms folded, toe-tapping, just-plain-standing-around-scanning-the-horizon, suddenly interrupted by random bursts of pandemonium. Often, (and despite years of experience) after all that anticipation-infused waiting, the response to the first lightning bolt is either: 1) Crap, the lightning is way over there; or 2) CRAP! The lightning is right here! What ensues is a Keystone Cops frenzy of camera bag flinging, tire screeching, gear tossing, tripod expanding, camera cursing, Lightning Trigger fumbling bedlam. Followed by more waiting. And waiting. And waiting….
I’ve always found the waiting part of lightning photography a lot like fishing—spiced up by the understanding that these fish have the ability to strike you dead without warning. Both fishing and lightning chasing are an intoxicating mix of serene communing with nature, with an undercurrent of giddy anticipation. And whether you’re fishing or trying to photograph lightning, a strike is far from a guarantee that you’ll reel anything in.
Just as fish somehow slip the hook, seeing a lightning bolt is no guarantee that my camera recorded it. Some of my lightning “the one that got away” stories, especially when I was just starting, turned out to be something I did wrong (and my list of stupid mistakes is too long, and embarrassing, to detail in public), but usually it’s simply because lightning can sometimes come and go before even the fastest camera can respond.
One frustration that I’ve learned to deal with is that when a Lightning Trigger is attached and turned on, the camera is in its shutter half-pressed mode (to allow the absolute fastest response), which disables many/most (varies with the camera) controls and the LCD image review—and I guarantee that the surest way to ensure another lightning strike is to turn off your Lightning Trigger to review the last frame, because the instant you do, a spectacular triple-strike will fire right in the middle of your frame. Guaranteed. (This is an extension of the axiom every photographer knows: The best way to make something you’ve been waiting for happen, is to put away your camera gear.) And though there’s no way to prove it, I think we all know that each time we pull the line out of the water to make sure the worm is still there, the “big one” swims right by.
Better late than never
This year I only did one Grand Canyon Monsoon workshop, and true to form, nearly got carpal tunnel scrolling through the weather forecasts in the weeks leading up to the trip. One week in advance, the conditions looked promising, but as the workshop approached, I was alarmed to see it trending drier with each forecast. By the time we started, the NWS was promising clear skies from start to finish.
I’ve seen forecasts like this before, and while they often do come true, I’ve also seen them change on a dime. I also found hope in the forecasts for Flagstaff and Williams to the south (that’s right, I don’t just obsessively scroll the Grand Canyon forecasts, but the nearby forecasts as well), which had thunderstorm chances in the 20-30 percent range all week. This told me that the moisture was nearby, and only a very slight change would send it the 70 or so miles north to Grand Canyon.
The evening of the workshop’s first day (Monday), a few clouds were added to the Thursday forecast—no rain, but at least the moisture was moving in the right direction. Then, in the forecast released Tuesday evening, we were “promised” a 20 percent chance of rain on Friday. With each subsequent forecast (they’re updated several times a day), it appeared things were trending in the right direction for the end of the week and beyond. Unfortunately, the workshop ended Friday morning. So I encouraged everyone with flexibility in their schedule to extend their stay at least through Friday afternoon, and about half the group was able to do it—including Curt (the photographer assisting me) and me.
This workshop enjoyed beautiful sunrises and sunsets, including a real jaw-dropper at Cape Royal on Thursday evening, plus a pretty great Milky Way shoot the night before. And a few in the group stayed up late on Thursday night and got some nice, though fairly distant, night lightning from the Grand Canyon Lodge deck. But those of us who opted to stay an extra day hung our lightning hopes on the Friday and Saturday forecasts.
Much to the consternation of those who added a night hoping for lightning, Friday morning dawned cloudless. But I reassured everyone that this is actually a good thing (it really is), because clear skies maximize the surface heating that fuels the convection thunderstorms require. Though the workshop officially ended after that morning’s sunrise shoot, I promised them I’d be around and happy to help. For starters, I created a text thread that enabled me keep them up to date on the thunderstorm development.
Then I camped out in the Grand Canyon Lodge Sun Room, keeping one (or more) eye on the spectacular view across the canyon to the South Rim and beyond. Late morning my lightning app started reporting strikes north of Williams, less than 60 miles due south. A little before 1:00 p.m. clusters of towering cumulus started blooming just south of the rim, and I knew the lightning wouldn’t be far behind—right on schedule. I texted the group that it’s go-time, then started setting up.
I captured my first lightning strike at 1:15, and between then and 4:00 p.m. captured a total of 59 frames with lightning. I know the others who stayed also captured many nice strikes. Though first bolts were relatively distant, things started to get really good a little before 2:00. I can’t express how much fun it is to be set up and ready, waiting for the next strike, and hearing the exclamations from the group when one hits.
The first strikes started behind the South Rim, a little east (left) of straight across, more or less in the direction of (and beyond) Grandview Point. Gradually the activity moved to the right and closer, approaching the rim, with the strikes increasing in frequency, proximity, and size as they moved. The quantity and volume of the exclamations increased correspondingly. In the nearly two hours of peak activity, the best stuff happened south and southwest of our position.
The two things that I wish for most in a lightning image is a bolt that lands inside the canyon, and capturing a bolt’s actual point of impact. This image checks both boxes. You can clearly see the lightning strike several hundred feet below the rim, and while it might not be clear in this downsized jpeg, my full-size original clearly shows the red/orange point of impact, as well as a fainter branch landing even farther down.
Another thing I love about this image in particular (and one other very similar capture titled “Rim Shot” in the gallery below), is the distance it traveled, and the circuitous route it took. Those familiar with Grand Canyon might be interested to know that this bolt emerges from the clouds more or less above Pima Point on Hermit’s Rest Road, and after more random direction changes than a frightened squirrel, finally smacks the wall a few hundred feet below Yavapai Point, about 5 horizontal miles away. Pretty cool.
Epilogue
Given our successful Friday, Curt and I hit the road for home Saturday morning. But I did keep in contact with others, and the reports were that the Saturday lightning was at least as good as Friday.
In a few days I’ll post Part 2, with more images from this day, plus an updated explanation of the science of lightning.
Join me for next year’s Grand Canyon lightning chase
Lots of Lightning
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