Contrary to popular belief lightning can strike the same place twice as shown in this timed exposure in the Ajo Mountains of Arizona. Although there are devices available for capturing lightning images, I find that composing a shot and then making a timed exposure of one to three minutes in sync with the rhythm of the strikes works just as well.

This image was made with a 300mm lens at a distance of about ten miles. While heading back from a day of shooting at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, I noticed the storm in the distance just after sunset and was surprised by the consistency of the strikes on the ridge. Shooting lightning can be dangerous (a tripod makes a good lightning rod!), but the conditions were perfect on this evening with clear skies above me and the long lens bringing the drama safely into view. The challenging part was actually framing the image in complete darkness using only the light from the strikes to compose. After opening the shutter, I watched and waited as mother nature created her elaborate light painting.

Chaos is a term often used these days to describe our lives or our economy, but it’s also a natural concept that describes the non-linear ways in which nature moves. Chaos theory has its origins in the 1960’s when meteorologists first studied weather patterns and determined that the smallest factors could dramatically change the outcome. Edward Lorenz discovered that something as subtle as a butterfly’s wings could create an extreme variation in weather simulations, which became known as “the butterfly effect” and explains why it’s impossible to predict the weather with 100% accuracy.

Examples of chaos theory in nature include the movement of the ocean and wind, the escape pattern of an animal, water flowing down a river, and climate changes. They all have unpredictable but logical results, which means that we won’t know exactly what’s going to happen next but it will make sense when it does. From a photographic standpoint chaos often creates a wonderful palette of  form and color that leaves us with a sense of awe at the natural world around us.