A thunderstorm rolled through at sunrise this morning. I looked out the window and saw the early sun lighting up the Pillars, so I rushed to launch the drone. Only when I imported the video did I realize that I’d managed to capture a lightning strike seconds before the thunderstorm swallowed up the sunshine for good that day. Amazing and unusual colors with the low, early-morning sun and stark thunderstorm backdrop.

I extracted and stacked three stills from the drone video and retouched in Photoshop, enlarged with Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI, cropped, and adjusted in Lightroom to arrive at the final still.