lightining Lightning - View larger

Perhaps we could let our imaginations play over this scene. Hear as well as see. Watch the flashes and wait for the rolling reverberant booms below our lower bass.... See it in motion and in a panorama of this seaport village in the offshore Italian island of Sardinia. Needs to be much larger and fill the vision though... Obscure place where old legends never die...Maybe even a few Gothic elements( cue some theremin in the back for effect). Is that Dr Victor Frankenstein on the top of the hill, hoisting sled to the rooftop to catch the high voltage current on his creation. No, sorry, it is too late for Halloween. To me it has atmosphere. Mood. And atmosphere,especially in umber and velvet color works. Nature playing pins. The gods or ancients doing bowling games ... Imagination makes it. I am a sucker for stormy weather tableaux of fire in the sky. Atavistic thing, the fire in the sky.

I find the lightning and sky interesting in a documentary fashion. The town below the mountains doesn't seem like anything special and does not hold any interest. Cropping the image at the base of the mountains, just above the distracting bright lights, gives a more satisfy photo of the sky, which is where all of the drama is unfolding.

Gerry: aren't all islands offshore?

You got me there, Robin. My island is so off shore it I am not sure what shore it is off of, for sure.

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate Giangiorgio for this image.
For me, the piece of the city that is shown at the bottom, does not rival at all, neither spoil the view of the sky that rightly occupies the upper two thirds. Then, as the distribution of thirds is perfect, in my opinion, it makes no sense to ask ourselves whether city yes or city no. It's simply the area that was chosen to be photographed. If he had made the shot in a plain in the middle of nowhere, problably he'd have been in danger due to lighting.

To me, it also strikes the difference between the colors of natural light /lighting and artificial light/lamps. Being a strong point to consider and beautifully enhances the compositional force.

Perhaps... the true merit of the shot resides in the patient who the photographer has had, as he decribes in the introduction, to overlay all these shots and so let us enjoy a phenomenom that we could not actually see with our eyes, as a simple lightning would blind us, and probably there's not so much lighting together at once.
And here we can see many of them, with no problem.
This overlay is made with a lot of expertise, there's no trace of any layers that do not match or forgotten lines of pixels, so like almost a work of craftsmanship.

Anyway, I think Giangiorgio chose viewing and representing this prodigality of light in nature, this way=his own way, just what he saw or felt as he's presenting.

I personally like this image a lot, because all lights are very well managed.
Congrats!

Very powerful and dramatic capture of the lighting in the sky, Giangiorgio. The sky is alive with hight voltage tension. A spectacular image. Best regards, Paul.

Thanks a lot Paul for your visit and beautiful appreciated comment