A raged Mother Nature hurls lightning bolts with millions of volts down the Grand Canyon’s rim.
Photographer Rolf Maeder captured many lightning strikes hitting the grand Canyon under an extremely stormy sky by using long exposures.
Sometimes opportunities can appear out of nowhere. Maeder and two friends traveled from Sedona to the grand Canyon on August 30th in order to capture the sunset. However, they quickly realized that the extremely foggy light prevented them from seeing what they were after. They made the decision to head back to Sedona to check out a few additional vantage points.
At Moran Point, they observed that a lightning storm was developing in the distance. They started putting their tripods in place and taking shots because that was far more than they had anticipated. Maeder used a Nikon D800 camera with a 24mm lens, f/8 aperture, ISO 400, and a 25-second exposure to capture the image with the two lightning strikes at 9 pm. It was possible to get two lightning strikes in one picture thanks to the long exposure!
Over a mile deep, up to 18 miles wide, and 277 miles long, the grand Canyon is a natural wonder. As the Colorado River and its tributaries carved their channels through layer after layer of rock, they have exposed over two billion years of Earth’s geological history. These images were captured from Moran Point on the South Rim of the canyon (7160 feet above sea level).
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