It’s a challenging feat for any photographer to document lighting as it strikes down towards earth in just the blink of an eye. But, with great patience and dedication, Willoughby Owen successfully captures all kinds of electrical bolts as they light up the night. By day, the 24-year-old meteorologist runs the Hamilton NZ Weather Station in Australia, but by night, he seeks stormy adventure.
The majority of Owen’s images capture a smattering of lighting streaks as they break away from each other and paint the sky. Every storm seems to have a different color palette, featuring a range of vibrant yellows and oranges to deep blues and purples. From Nightcliff in the Northern Territory of Australia to the outskirts of Lubbock in western Texas, Owen’s world travels have allowed him to witness many of these natural spectacles. His compositions including everything from one single bolt reaching out of the clouds and touching down around a sea of haystacks, to hundreds of tiny sparks stretching out over the abyss of the ocean.
