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Chicago’s been getting whacked with some kick ass thunderstorms these last couple weeks. Now, like so many of my kind — who thrive on dry asphalt and warm weather to best enjoy our extracurricular love affair of choice — I hate precipitation in almost all of its dreadful, disgusting forms. However, I make but one special exception for the quintessential epic summer storm.

A few days ago I awoke to a rumbling behemoth just south of my apartment, and through some mixture of luck, the storm’s intensity, and wake-and-bake induced focus, I managed to snag a couple elusive shots of lightning bolts. These were firsts for me, but there have been more since…

Without a tripod (to say nothing of patience), it’s hard to get good shots of lightning. The composition here is not quite ideal, but without a tripod or shooting successive bursts at a time, I think this is really the best I could hope for. Frankly, the storm itself deserves all the credit for making this even remotely possible — there were so many flashes of lightning I was starting to feel like I was in that scene from War of the Worlds when fucking Dakota Fanning won’t stop screaming.