dagaggle

So, a bit of back story. To put this in Context: Saturday 11th August, for once in this dismal excuse for a Summer the sun, had indeed, come out from hiding. It wasn’t the greatest of days with a generally large amount of cloud and lots of wind. Oh, and no surf. So we took to the beach anyway hoping for a nice ‘day out’. Had a lovely walk across the cliff top at Llangennith (Wales), to Rhossili, around the headland and backdown to the Beach. By this time, the sun had started to go down.

So, with the intention of maybe grabbing the tail end of the sunset (which looked dubious due to the amount of cloud) we headed off to the pub and came back to the beach an hour or so later. The sunset, as expected, failed to appear in a dramatic form so we took to attempting to create some sort of interesting photos anyway. Out came the lights.

By this point it had started to rain. There were the ominous sounds of thunder in the distance. During one 5 minute or so exposure, we were witness to a sudden display of beautiful lightning across the hilltop behind us. Unfortunately, opposite the direction of the camera. Said camera was quickly moved to face the hilltop. The rain lashed down.

The lightning Struck. Beautiful. Having never taken photos of lightning before, I was ‘in the dark’ so to speak when it came to the best approach, exposure wise. Still, I managed the best I could with the rain and general quite heavy conditions. Oh, just to clarify, we were standing in the middle of the beach at this point. The lightning was inconsistent, it didn’t seem to come from any particular direction. The storm, it had seemed, had decided to move out to sea. The camera was moved.

With luck, shortly after swiftly setting the camera back up again, we were treated to another lovely display of lightning. Then came a few minutes of confusion. Seemingly, the storm had turned back. Flashes were appearing back over the headland, and then, within minutes, the rain was pouring down directly on top of us. Not just the smattering we had been treated to so far; the sky had opened up. It suddenly seemed that standing in the middle of a flat open beach was not the best idea; this was very much exemplified by great flashes that lit up the sky; the lightning was hitting all around us. We ran. It was terrifying, yet exhilarating. The duration between strikes seemed to have suddenly decreased dramatically, and it felt like it was hitting all around us. Still, during our sprint off the beach I managed to find the time to set the camera to expose, wielded ungainly on the top of my tripod, roughly held in my hands, pointing up at the sky.

I have no idea where this struck. It can’t have been that far away. This was a 3 minute (only knowing that from the exif) exposure so I’m thinking there’s a few different strikes in there.. but still, they would appear to have landed awfully close. Still, we managed to make it back to the car. Soaking wet.