Above: I managed to catch this shot of lightning at Brampton Abbots during the storm on the evening of Tuesday, 28th June. Depending upon your screen brightness, you might just be able to make out Brampton Abbotts Church and a gravestone to the left of the picture. Photographing lightning is not easy! This is the only shot out of thirty attempts which actually caught a fork of lightning. Tina stamped her feet and absolutely refused to let me stand under a tree, which was perfectly placed to look in the most lively direction of the storm (I forgot to mention the copper wire kite). No amount of persuasion that sometimes it is necessary to take risks to get the job done would work and I ended up having to wait until the main storm had passed from overhead to keep the camera relatively dry and stand in the open. The method of pointing in the general direction of the storm with an 18mm wide angle lens and the shutter open at f22, then waiting for the lightning to occur was used.

Below: Lightning never strikes where you want it too! One of the failure shots which I thought looked reasonably pretty. It shows the above mentioned tree, lit in silhouette by light pollution from the Overross Industrial Estate.

Occasionally, taking photos for the media allows access to otherwise inaccessible vantage points and whenever this happens, I try to get shots of other things of interest whilst there. Coincidentally, following the 'Nature Watch' photograph of lightning above, which was taken by Brampton Abbotts Church; without Tina there to nag me, I took this photograph of St. Michael's and All Angels, Brampton Abbotts whilst literally standing on the lightning conductor at the highest point of John Kyrle High School. I have to confess that I manufactured the blue(ish) sky as the weather was rather dull and overcast whilst I was up there. The trees in front of the church are the same ones as pictured above, but from the opposite side.