S'porean photographer captures stunning composite photo of lightning during April 17 thunderstorm

The image is actually made up of 14 different photos of the same storm.

Low Jia Ying | April 18, 2022, 12:53 PM

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Singaporeans were greeted with an especially heavy thunderstorm last evening (Apr. 17), and photographers in Singapore had a field day capturing the streaks of lightning that lit up the sky.

One photo in particular received a lot attention from netizens, with many expressing shock and wonder at a composite photograph of the thunderstorm.

Photo via Simon Lim/FB

The photo, which was uploaded by Simon Lim to the Facebook group CloudSpotting & SkySpotting Singapore, has since attracted over 100 comments and more than 1,500 shares.

Photo actually a stack of 14 photos

The photographer, Simon Lim, told Mothership that the photo was actually made up of a stack of 14 photos, with each one exposed for about two minutes.

Lim said each shot captured approximately three to five cloud to ground lightning strikes.

The 53-year-old said each photo was taken from his balcony in Neptune Court, a condominium complex in the Marine Parade area.

The shots were angled towards the west, with Victoria Junior College, Ngee Ann Primary School, CHIJ Katong Convent and the Marine Parade estate visible in the foreground.

His Facebook post of the photo said the shots were taken between 8:40pm and 9:10pm last night.

 

To create the final image, Lim said he corrected the exposure for each shot and later stacked and blended them with Photoshop.

"Blessed" that Singapore gets a lot of lightning activity

Lim estimated there were over 40 strikes in the 30 minutes from the first frame to the last.

There were even more strikes that he was unable to capture as they were either too bright or fell outside his camera's field of view.

Lim, whose full time job is a centre director at a music school, told Mothership that he only got interested in lightning photography in May last year.

He credits his skills to a group of like-minded photographers called #sgstormtrackers, who together help to refine their technical knowledge to capture stunning shots of lightning.

"We are 'blessed' in a way [that] Singapore is among the top three places in the world for lightning activity. So there are lots of opportunities to try shooting lightning. [We] just have to read the weather forecast and live reports from #sgstormtrackers, and set up [our] equipment facing the right direction, and pray the rain doesn't wash out the entire scene," Lim said.

Lim humbly said he was just thankful that he was in "the right place at the right time" and had the right conditions to make the shot work.

He hopes the photo shows everyone the intensity of the "fiery lightning" in Singapore, and hopes to get more interesting shots in time to come.

April is one of the months in the year with a high incidence of lightning activity.

Here are some past stunning shots of lightning taken by other photographers in Singapore in April:

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Top photo via Simon Lim/FB