Dustin Farrell travelled over 32,000 km’s to film lightning bolts and the end product is mesmerising! His footage looks like something from a movie.
South Africans are all too familiar with lightning storms, just head to Gauteng in the summertime and you can experience bone-rattling thunder and electrifying lightning storms. This happens all over the country too, so you don’t have to leave the comfort of your home to experience it.
Dustin Farrell, an American from Arizona, spent his summer chasing storms just to get footage of lightning. He travelled over 32,000 km’s to get as much footage as possible. The shots are some of his best work and give an eye-opening look at how lightning reacts during the storms. The video has been called ‘Transient’, meaning: “lasting only a short time; existing briefly.”
“‘Transient’ is a compilation of the best shots from my storm chasing adventures of summer 2017. Most of the lightning footage was captured in uncompressed raw at 1000 frames per second with our Phantom Flex4K.”
“This summer I chased for over 30 days and travelled 20K miles. My respect and admiration for storm chasers became even stronger this year. This is one of the most difficult projects I have ever attempted in my career. On several occasions, I found myself uncomfortable either mentally or physically. Chasing storms with a Phantom Flex4K is stressful even when things are going well.”
“There were at least 10 days where I returned home with my tail between my legs and nothing to show after a ten-hour chase and 500 miles. There were also a couple of days that I drove home with an ear to ear smile that lasted for hours.”
Dustin’s analogy of lightning is quite beautiful: “Lightning is like a snowflake. Every bolt is different. I learned that lightning varies greatly in speed.”
“There are some incredible looking bolts that I captured that didn’t make the cut because even at 1000fps they only lasted for one frame during playback. I also captured some lightning that appears computer generated it lasted so long on the screen.”
Watch the incredible footage below.
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