On July 31st 2023, I was just finishing up shooting a beautiful yet quiet sunset in the Charleston Harbor. As I looked through my phone I instinctually checked the radar (something I did about every 10 minutes), and saw a massive storm moving towards Charleston. The yellow map was absolutely littered with thousands of tiny red dots, each representing a recent lightning strike. Storms move pretty slow considering their size, so I knew I had plenty of time before heading out.
As the night progressed, I headed out to my location; an empty piece of land right next to the Embassy Suites in Mount Pleasant, which lies directly adjacent to the Arthur Ravenel Bridge. I noticed the storm was going to pass over parts of North Charleston, West Ashley and James Island, before heading out into the ocean and dissipating. With this trajectory, I set the scene with the Ravenel bridge taking the main part of the photo.
After starting around 10:00 PM, I let my camera continuously take shot after shot of the beautiful lightning storm. Bolts of lightning burst out from everywhere, and I got plenty of spectacular photos of the storm. Even though the shots were looking like the storm was right above the bridge, it was over 15 miles away, so I knew I was well out of reach. For 2 hours, I took one photo after another, and by the time 11:45 came around, the storm was dying down. with a strike happening about every 5 minutes. At this point I had gotten some fantastic shots, but not quite the photo I was looking for, which was a bright strike directly above and in line with the Ravenel Bridge.
At around 11:50 PM, the storm was rapidly fading as it moved westward over the lowcountry, opposite of where I was stationed. Knowing I got a few good shots I started packing up my gear. I set my remote timer to manual mode so that it would stop taking continuous exposures, and started reaching for my camera to take off the tripod. As soon as my fingers touched the camera, the sky absolutely exploded in front of my eyes, and I clicked the shutter release cable I had in my left hand so fast, removed my right hand from my tripod, stood back and prayed that it wasn't a blurry shot.
I personally don't remember seeing much of the actual strike after that, but I know I was too busy focusing on my camera and making sure it didn't move. As soon as the camera finished taking the 15 second exposure, my brain imploded. What you see in the edited photo is not far off from what the RAW image looked like coming out of the camera. Lightning strikes in every single direction, all connecting to one single origin point in the photo (right above the first pillar of the bridge). Look closely, and you may see a flying dragon and wings on the left, or the outline of the state of South Carolina on the right. The strike was so bright that you can actually see the reflection of the bridge on the water, and string-like strikes reaching in the opposite direction of where I was standing.
Post-lightning photo was a fever dream. I immediately started to pack up camp, as I knew I got the shot of a lifetime. Blasting AC/DC's Thunderstruck over the same bridge I shot on the way home, I immediately got to editing, posting the image the next morning. The feedback and responses I got from the photograph were absolutely thrilling. Not only did the image receive thousands and thousands of likes, the video I made documenting the process went viral, receiving over 7,000,000 views and almost one million likes. People were saying how they were driving over the bridge during that shot, and were in awe of the strike. "I thought the world was ending" said one commenter.
Over the next few weeks, I would sell dozens of prints and would enter my "Lightning Over The Ravenel III" photo into the SC State Fair, and would place 3rd. If you're interested in a print of the lightning photo or anything else, just let me know. As always, thanks for reading. -Morgan
