I loved the development of this lightning strike. It was not just a sudden zap, but more of a crawling, entangling strike. It was like several snakes came from a hole and were crawling around the bottom and up the edges of the cloud. Very cool.
Finally, I was able to catch this lightning shot even though I do not have a tripod. I just used my hands to clamp the camera down to the hand rail of the porch. I did not quite catch the horizon, because of the whole hand held thing, but it turned out well for this strike because it was a little higher up anyway.
I had already caught a few strikes, some bright and some dark, and was finding that my combination of f/stop and the intensity of the strike were really just luck. I tried f/8 and f/11, and eventually caught this one, which was both a decent looking strike and the right f/stop setting.
