About Lightning Photography

Welcome to Lightning Photography by Michael Bath

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I started taking weather pictures way back in the mid 1980s while living at Ballina on the NSW far north coast (Australia). I moved to Sydney for work in January 1989 and started storm chasing during 1993 after meeting Jimmy Deguara at a storm spotter training session at the Bureau of Meteorology.

Married to Alison and with two children, we returned to Northeast NSW in May 1999 and live on an acreage at McLeans Ridges - which is a farming area between Lismore and Alstonville in the Northern Rivers district. My weather webcam has been capturing this local scene from McLeans Ridges since early 2002.

Most of my storm chasing is in this district, but also extends to the Northern Tablelands, Northwest Slopes & Plains, Darling Downs and Southeast Queensland when time permits. Storm chasing remains a passionate hobby with four trips to Tornado Alley in the US in recent years. The goal of the US chasing is to get close to tornadoes but does include opportunities for lightning pictures as well. My work is also weather related as National Operations Manager with the Early Warning Network.

This website was first published on Geocities in May 1996 and has undergone a few face lifts, most recently in June 2009. New photos are added regularly if the weather is inspiring enough. Lightning photos prior to June 2004 were taken on a Nikon FG20 SLR film camera with 50mm & 35-200mm zoom lenses, and since then with various Nikon digital SLRs (D70, D90, D7100) with 50mm, 10-20mm, 18-70mm, 18-200mm, 18-250mm & 16-300mm zoom lenses.

I'm co-webmaster with Jimmy Deguara of the huge website covering Australian Severe Weather and Extreme Storms discussion. On those sites you will find reports and data on thunderstorms, storm chasing, tropical cyclones, floods, weather observing, lightning data, links to other Australian weather pages, and over 70,000 weather photograph.

I've put together a gallery of the very best and most spectacular lightning photos from my collection. You can browse them here and also page 2 and page 3 and page 4 and page 5 and page 6 and page 7 and page 8.

Contact details and information about copyright can be found here.