Singaporean photographer’s lightning photo electrifies social media
Photo: Lightning strikes in Sembawang (Darren Soh)
While many Singaporeans stayed home during the thunderstorm on Sunday night (22 May), a local photographer took the chance to capture what is possibly the most incredible photo of lightning strikes in the country from a vantage point in Sembawang.
Architectural photographer Darren Soh, 40, told Yahoo Singapore he has been chasing lightning storms in the island for almost five years. He uses an app called Rain Alarm – which gives updates on when a storm is approaching as well as the rain direction – to determine where is the best spot to capture the lightning strikes.
On Sunday night, when Soh received an alert from the Rain Alarm app, he grabbed his Sony Alpha 7R II and his tripod and headed out to catch the storm.
Soh’s vantage point was on the 16th floor of Block 592B Montreal Link, a five minute walk from his HDB flat.
“It was a sheltered spot, I was at a stairwell. The left side of the block sticks out, which was where the wind was coming from. So I didn’t get wet because I did not have to face the wind,” Soh told Yahoo Singaporeover the phone on Monday (23 May). He was “completely dry”, he added.
The photo he took was a composite of 12 of the 100 photos he took of the lightning that night. He posted the image on his Facebook page, where it has gotten more than 31,000 reactions, and more than 9,000 shares within a day of it being published.
The photographer of 15 years says he has always wanted to snap a photo of lightning in Singapore. In the Facebook post he said, “I’ve been trying to chase lightning storms in order to photograph them for years, but I’ve never been quite successful until tonight… the storm came in fast and furious from Johor and I rushed to a vantage point in Sembawang facing the Straits of Johor where I knew I would have a clear view for miles. I wasn’t disappointed - this image is a layer of 12 photos made just under a hour period to show the number of big strikes.”
