It was 2008, and I was still living in Columbus, Indiana. We had a nice, large back yard with a couple of trees in it, and also power lines. That will become relevant in just a little bit. When you look at the photo on this page, it’s really hard to make out what’s going on, so I’ll explain.

We had a line of wicked storms come through. When there are storms, I never hide inside, but instead I go out to look at them. I remember standing in the driveway, and some raindrops were coming down. Well, it wasn’t just rain because there was dirt in them. That means that there’s a tornado nearby. It was nearly dark, but I went inside and got the camera and tripod. You kind of need the tripod when it starts to get dark because the shutter on the camera stays open longer to let in more light, and unless you have nerves of steel, your subtle motions will blur the image.

I waited for a while, and nothing came of it, but I was sitting outside in the dark on the back patio after a while. That’s when a derecho hit. I was this huge wall of wind strong enough to snap part of the tree off right into the power lines. I just happened to be sitting there with the camera and noticed little sparks fall from the tree. I pointed the camera at the sparks for some reason and hit the shutter. It opened up for a couple of seconds and BOOM! The wires caused an explosion that you see in the camera. At first (it wasn’t a modern camera of today) I wasn’t sure what was caught on the Flash card. I brought it inside and realized that I caught a split-second explosion purely by accident. If you look closely you can see the trails of sparks falling to the ground.

Lucky shot.