From my 41st-floor hotel room in Singapore, I was awakened at three a.m. by a loud crack of thunder. Had I closed the sliding glass door to my outside deck before bed, I might have only stirred and fallen back asleep. But as it was wide open, the thunder woke me completely and spurred me to my deck.

I set my camera for 15-second exposures at f/11, with a white balance set to Tungsten/Incandescent to accommodate the color temperature of the city. Within an hour, I had witnessed more than a hundred lightning strikes and had captured more than a dozen shots similar to the first one shown here. I was happy with these images, despite the fact that the bulk of the lightning strikes were taking place to the far left. Compositionally, this was not ideal. I was determined to include the Singapore skyline in my frame as well as the Marina Bay Sands casino and hotel on the left. So I kept shooting, hoping for the mother lode, a lightning strike hitting right atop one of the city’s skyscrapers.

Somewhere around five a.m. my persistence paid off. No lightning strike that night was more impressive than the one you see here. It may have taken me more than 35 years of shooting, but I have finally recorded an awesome lightning strike!

A great capture, but not ideal compositionally.
16–35mm lens at 18mm, f/11 for 15 seconds, white balance set to Tungsten/Incandescent

Finally, the mother lode!
16–35mm lens at 18mm, f/11 for 15 seconds, white balance set to Tungsten/Incandescent

Although I am not a fan of manipulating images in Photoshop, I can be persuaded to do this technique with the understanding that it is a trick. The trick is combining a number of lightning strikes into a single exposure.

Keep in mind that this will work only when the camera and lens are on a tripod. You must also use the same focal length and composition over the course of your exposures. As you can see, I captured all three of these exposures from the same location with the same focal length lens. In two of the shots, you can see a lightning strike, and in the third image, the large JumboTron screen is visible with a red screen. Because all three images line up exactly, I was able to place the images atop one another in Photoshop. Using several layer masks, I “painted” in the important areas, so I ended up with an image that is realistic but very much manipulated.

The first three exposures were taken from the same location with the same focal length lens.
24–25mm lens, f/11 for 15 seconds with 2- to 8-stop variable ND filter

The first three exposures were taken from the same location with the same focal length lens.
24–25mm lens, f/11 for 15 seconds with 2- to 8-stop variable ND filter

The first three exposures were taken from the same location with the same focal length lens.
24–25mm lens, f/11 for 15 seconds with 2- to 8-stop variable ND filter

After combining the images in Photoshop, here is the result.