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White-Hot Fire in the Sky

A FLASH LIGHTS THE SKY, FOLLOWED BY AN EXPLOSIVE BLAST of thunder rolling across the desert. Lightning strikes without warning. Its only certainty is its uncertainty. There's an element of danger in making these time-exposure photographs of the raw power and ephemeral beauty of lightning. One photographer I know said he was knocked off his feet by a jagged strike. I feared lightning, and photographing it was my way of confronting that fear. I've been taking pictures of lightning since 1980, and now I enjoy thunderstorms so much I can hardly wait until the monsoon season starts, and the sky lights up with its furious artistry.

White-Hot Fire in the Sky

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 24 AND 25) A summer thunderstorm over the Catalina foothills unleashes a fury of lightning strikes. Lightning. Sometimes terrifying, always awe-inspiring, this natural phenomenon can produce an electrical charge of hundreds of thousands of amperes and may burn as hot as several million degrees Fahrenheit. (LEFT) The lights of downtown Tucson glow in the lowering dusk as a storm over the Santa Catalina Mountains unfurls its fiery curtain.

White-Hot Fire in the Sky

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 28 AND 29) Illuminated from within by lightning created at its turbulent center, a nighttime thunderstorm rakes a southern Arizona ridgetop. (LEFT AND ABOVE) The glorious power of a summer storm awakens feelings of wonder and awe. Emotions both visceral and sublime multiply with the nearness of each succeeding thunderbolt. As the lightning draws closer, a primal awareness asserts itself, demanding our complete involvement in the moment. To know how many miles away lightning is, count off the seconds after the flash until the sound of the thunder, then divide that number by five.