McCown has been chasing storms since 2004, and he’s gotten pretty good at capturing nature’s light show. He told Tucson News Now that he was just off the Marana exit of I-10 when he saw a good area and set up his equipment.
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And now, the once-in-a-lifetime shot of the two intersecting in the desert sky has gone viral.
“I saw this flash and said, ‘Hey. I wonder if I got that”.
According to KOLD-TV, Tucson resident Greg McCown, a real-estate agent and photographer, was storm chasing Saturday near Marana when he snapped the image. “When I pulled it off on the LCD screen in desert I was doing a happy dance”.
The post has been liked more than 105,000 times since it was posted on Sunday. “The combination of having a rainbow, a lightning bolt that is powerful enough to really stand out in the daytime and composed perfectly with a saguaro has never happened for me before”.
After getting caught in a heavy storm while out shooting with some friends, McCown noticed a rainbow and started driving toward it. He found a clear scene that was free of telephone poles and other distractions, and captured the photo above as the storm was fading away. “The shot of the year”. That was just beyond me.
“I’ve only seen the potential for lightning mixed with a rainbow on four or five occasions”, he said, “And I’ve only been able to try and photograph it three of those times, taking thousands and thousands of pictures, but no luck”.
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Tuscon dreams of adding a shot of lightning over the Grand Canyon to his collection next.
