Mother nature can be a fickle woman. (I hope she’s not listening) She doesn’t always give us what we want. She doesn’t even always give us what she was giving us 5 minutes earlier. She definitely has a mind of her own.

As a nature/landscape photographer it’s best not to have a preconceived idea of what she’s going to give you when you go out to make images. Last fall I got a call from friend and wonderful photographer Dick Okell the afternoon he returned to Crested Butte. He had an idea for a photo outing with a very specific shot in mind. I liked the idea and chose to go along with Dick and his wife to the Brush Creek area south of Crested Butte. We were looking for a certain mountain peak to light up at sunset under the clearing storm. Hoping for a red sky and great backdrop we set up for our sunset shot about 20 minutes later. That’s when it started to rain. That’s when the mountain peak we were hoping to photograph completely disappeared behind low dark clouds. That’s when we got back into the car.

As the sprinkles came and went and the lightning began we hunkered down in the car to wait out the storm and catch up on stories from the past month. Dick and Beverly are wonderful company and we don’t really need a thunderstorm to enjoy each others company. A little bourbon would have even been better but our planning was pretty hurried for this outing. It’s good to have company to commiserate with when weather spoils your plans.

After a while I remembered that I had my Lightning Trigger in the bag I brought. I decided to give it a shot. The pun is intended and if you’ve ever used a Lightning Trigger you know that you’ll get a lot of photos of “nothing” due to the way the device works. It “sees” lightning in front of the camera, beside the camera, behind the camera, in the next county, maybe even lightning from yesterday. It’s not the most productive of tools but it can do things the human eye/hand can only dream of. It can trigger the camera shutter fast enough to capture lightning. Pretty cool!

So I did get a few images of lightning in a daylight situation that I couldn’t do without the trigger. Since there’s no telling where the lightning is going to strike the composition is a little wonky but hey, there’s a rainbow and lightning in the same scene. I kind of like this one. What do you think? It’s just another photography story of heading out to photograph one thing and coming home with something else. It happens all the time. It’s best to be flexible ’cause Mother Nature is a fickle woman.

This just in: The Denver Post reported that the Camera Obscura Gallery will be closing at the end of this month. I’m so sad. This was the most important photography gallery is the state of Colorado. It’s loss will be a substantial blow to Colorado culture.