light show.

I used to be terrified of storms. 

I had a valid reason for it -- when I was seven, my house was hit by what was probably a tornado that hadn't fully descended. After that night, any cloud cover I saw swelled in my mind to something monstrous, and I spent a lot of rainy evenings following my dad around the house and quite a few nights dragging my blanket and pillow out in front of their bedroom door to sleep any time I heard thunder.

Now, I think storms are glorious, awesome examples of God's power. This is a good paradigm shift for me, because there's no shortage of rocky weather in southern Illinois. 

Tonight, my older sister called me while I was at small group, telling me to grab my camera because there was a gorgeous cloud being lit up by lightning from within. 

I was too late to catch that particular system -- at least as the late evening light illuminated it perfectly -- but I did run home, grab Audra, and then drive out to a reservoir near town, where we stayed for about ten minutes, me shooting and both of us enjoying the light show.

I don't have a tripod (it's on my list), so I used my shoes to steady the camera on a couple of the shots...and almost all of them have crooked horizons. They're not excellent examples of weather photography by any means, either.

But I can honestly say that I look forward to the storms coming this summer, and I already have a couple locations in mind to shoot from the next time I see a front rolling in.

And maybe next time I'll have a tripod.