About Lightning Photography

Welcome to Lightning Photography by Michael Bath.

I have a passion for thunderstorms - in particular severe thunderstorms and lightning. I enjoy studying severe weather events - thunderstorms, floods, cold outbreaks and tropical cyclones.

I started taking weather pictures in 1987 while living at Ballina on the NSW Far North Coast of 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. I returned to the North Coast in May 1999 and now live on an acreage at McLeans Ridges - which is between Lismore and Alstonville in the Northern Rivers district. Most of my storm chasing is in this district, but also extends to the Northern Tablelands, Northwest Slopes & Plains and Southeast Queensland when time permits.

This website was first published on Geocities in May 1996 and has undergone a few face lifts. The most recent major update was in December 2005. Most of the photographs have been taken from either around Sydney or Northeast NSW. 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 the Nikon D70 digital SLR with 50mm & 18-70mm zoom lenses (from gallery page 15 onwards).

I'm joint webmaster with Jimmy Deguara of the huge web site covering all aspects of Australian Severe Weather. There you will find reports and data on thunderstorms, storm chasing, tropical cyclones, weather observations and observation techniques, lightning data, links to Australian weather data, homepages, over 20,000 weather photographs and lots more!! There is also the McLeans Ridges weather webcam and timelapsed weather movie collection from my home.

I've put together a gallery of the very best and most spectacular lightning photos from my collection. You can view them all here and here for page 2. I've also just released a hard cover lightning book

If you have any comments or questions, links to other weather photography, or just want to say hello, I can be contacted by emailing this address: mbath@ozemail.com.au

There is information about copyright here.