These are some of the timelapse photos I took of lightning on Singing Hills Drive southeast of Parker on July 13, 2011.  I have stacked two images in each of these composites in Photoshop to show multiple CG bolts and stepped leaders per photograph.  The lightning was very intense and close and luckily I was in a clear slot in the clouds avoiding rain and getting a good 25 minutes of solid lightning; one about every 30 seconds or so.

In Photoshop, I loaded the RAW images and then chose >Scripts >Loads Files into Stack.  From here I was able to choose the “Add Open Files” option and also checked the “Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images” option checkbox.  From the image that it created, all I needed to do is change the layering option to “Lighten” for each of the images.  I started with 4 or 5 images and chose the best two that fit together in each of these shots.

Would love to hear some of your Photoshop or photography techniques!  Leave comments if you can share anything cool that you do!  I appreciate it!

This next picture was across the street on September 2, 2012.  These were hitting everywhere around me so I had to put the tripod on the porch, put it on auto-pilot, and head inside.  I was able to get three in a row that made this amazing stacked series.  Looks like an outline of a woman–mother nature–Gaia to me.

Enjoy!