After a particularly heavy night out with Milo and Sonny, I’m woken up late this morning by the sound of the door to the balcony being rattled almost off its hinges.
I awake with a start – who the hell is on my balcony? How did they get there? And why are they rattling the door?
And then the thunderclap sounds as the room is lit up, even through the heavy curtains, by the accompanying lightning bolt.
The balcony door is being rattled only by the wind – it’s the mother of all thunderstorms, Thailand-style.
Every the optimist, I grabbed my camera and starting snapping randomly, hoping to catch an elusive lightning bolt. Predictably, I managed only to capture a dull sky.
Within a few minutes the storm has passed – the wind dies to a whisper, the torrential rain stops, and the puddles start to dry up almost immediately in the heat. Within an hour, you’d never have known it had rained…
To get a good thunderstorm picture, you need a tripod and a long exposure. Point the camera at a place likely to get strikes, like a tall building or nearby hill.