Thursday’s storms created the photo opportunity University of Virginia second-year student Owen Flickinger had been waiting for: lightning streaking across the sky above Old Cabell Hall, framed by a rain-soaked Lawn and the building’s warm glow.
“The stars, or storms, finally aligned yesterday to give me that chance,” Flickinger said.
Flickinger, an environmental science student and University Communications student intern, has long been interested in meteorology and had hoped to photograph lightning over Grounds. He knew Thursday’s heat and humidity could produce storms and planned to be ready with his camera.
But after a busy day of classes, the plan slipped his mind. It wasn’t until he spotted lightning while walking down the Lawn with a friend that he remembered the photo he’d been hoping to capture.
“Every couple of seconds, purple streaks of lightning would appear as tendrils across the sky while illuminating the clouds behind them,” he said.
Flickinger ran more than half a mile back to his apartment, grabbed his camera bag and raced back to the Lawn.
There, the wet brick paths reflecting the light caught his eye. He positioned his tripod near one of them and used a wide-angle lens to frame the path and sky. An eight-second exposure captured the orange glow of the buildings against the dark foreground while increasing his chances of catching a lightning strike.
Then he waited.
After about 10 minutes and 50 mostly dark frames, “I finally got the shot I came there for,” he said.
Flickinger calls the photograph “The Heart of the Storm” because the lightning appears to spread from a central point and spiral across the sky. The frame cuts off some of the lightning’s branches, but he thinks that adds to the image.
The timing made the long-awaited shot even more fitting.
“After all,” Flickinger said, “it was taken on only the third day of class.”
