“I chased storms more than 20,000 miles to make this video.”

This is one of the most difficult projects I have ever attempted. I was often uncomfortable, mentally or physically. There were many days when I returned home with my tail between my legs and nothing to show after a ten hour chase of 500 miles. There were also a couple of days that I drove home with an ear-to-ear smile that lasted for hours. Most of the lightning was captured in Arizona.

Lightning is like a snowflake. Every bolt is different and they vary greatly in speed. Some lightning bolts I captured didn’t make the cut because even at 1000fps they only lasted for one frame during playback. I also captured some lightning bolts that look computer-generated because they last so long onscreen.

Technical info: The Phantom Flex4K is a camera that must be post triggered while shooting high speed. This works out well for capturing lightning because the camera is always recording and rewriting to internal ram. As soon as a bolt appears in my view finder I trigger the camera to save what has been stored in the ram. Shooting at high frame rates requires a lot of light. Therefore, I mostly used my Zeiss Otus 28, 55, and 85mm lenses wide open at f1.4. In all, I captured 10TB of data during this production.

Music licensed from Audiomachine

© For licensing footage and work inquires contact me at dustin@dfvc.com.
This copyright protected video is a compilation of individually shot clips. Each clip is available on a rights managed license at 4K resolution. No permission for footage use will be given without a license agreement.