Lightning Storm - Inspiration
Saturday, August 4th, 2007
Thunder storm in Florida with lightning
Was I in danger? The air was electrified and as I stood on the beach with a camera on a metal tripod I could only guess at what was going to come out of the night and what this photograph would do for my photography business. This image was made in 1976 on Kodachrome film and it has sold all over the world and has been used in hundreds of publications and advertisements.
For the first ten years of it’s life I was using it for self promotions and sending it out to magazines and I had a few sales. Then I put it in a stock photography collection and it was licensed for one time use many times.
The stock agency, Southern Stock in Ft. Lauderdale was sold to Index Stock in the late 90s and the image went to New York. Of the hundreds of images in my stock files this was the sales leader. This image sold every month and was used in many different kinds of publications. Last year I left that stock house and decided to use the internet to market stock photography and the image is now sold royalty free on istockphoto.com.
For a few dollars you can buy this and use it royalty free. Good lightning photographs seem to be used by everyone, they are primordial energy that’s uncontrollable.
This is still one of my favorite 100 photographs because of what it is, not because of the sales history.