Nature by JJ

26/05/2026

'Road to Hawkins'
TLE Tuesday is back with this group of Red Sprites nestled in amongst a sea of green airglow.

This image came to be during a month long chase to find the perfect Jellyfish Sprite, the Queen of all sprites. The entire chase is featured in my latest YouTube video 'Presence'.

After a week of driving and staying out late at night, i decided to stop at this roadside due to exhaustion. I set up one camera, sat in a chair and fell asleep. I awoke later to find this scene nestled away amongst the images from this night.

📷

22/05/2026

'Grounded'
This shot from late last year was one of a handful of super close range bolts off a storm that was featured in one of my recent YouTube videos: Sky Fire.

This negative cloud to ground bolt has a rarely seen feature reaching up from the ground. These upward streamers can only be seen on very close strikes and is an integral part of the process. If you swipe to the end, you'll notice that another branch of this bolt is off frame and also much closer. A little poo came out from that one.

It's been a minute since my last post due to a hectic work schedule but rest assured, I haven't run out of content. Stay tuned for more epic Sprites and other TLEs coming soon!

⚡

20/03/2026

'Silent Extinction'
This image is from one of my many attempts to capture the best Jellyfish Red Sprite ever. The story of that chase is in my latest YouTube video if you haven't watched it yet.

Here, some carrot sprites explode over this distance thunderstorm, just barely visible through the haze of high altitude cloud.

Carrots are one of the more common sprite shapes we get here. Light painted and focus stacked.

05/03/2026

'Tenuous Renewal'
Sorry I've been slow with posting. I've been taking some time to rest after getting my last video 'Presence' out. Don't forget to go watch it on YouTube. 

This scene presented itself a few months ago while I was heading home from capturing b-roll footage for 'Presence'. While driving, I noticed a column of smoke from an earlier bushfire being sucked towards a patch of growing storms some tens of kilometres away. This was a good sign of a very strong storm developing. 

I arrived at this location just as the sun was starting to set and the colours were going off. This storm was severe warned at this stage but I knew I had to shoot it. Backlit storms are hard to come by in my area with the vast distances and limited roads. I dragged a couple of tripods up the only hill side for miles and set up this frame, holding on to them while being buffeted by strong winds. 

I was under the massive anvil at this point and I was hoping for a big cloud to ground strike in the patch of bare ground on the right side of the frame. Getting the point of impact is really difficult when most of the west Kimberley is extremely flat. After about 30 minutes, a big positive bolt dropped down and landed... just outside my frame. I. Was. Livid.

But hey, at least this shot turned out nice.

20/02/2026

New video out! This video documents my hunt for the unicorn of Red Sprites, the jellyfish, which culminated in one of the most unique sprites I've ever seen.

Filmed in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Best seen on the big screen.

High above powerful thunderstorms, red sprites — a rare form of transient luminous event (TLE) — erupt into the mesosphere more than 50km above Earth’s surfa...

20/02/2026

My latest video, called 'Presence' is now live on YouTube. The titular sprite, is likely the most unique Sprite I've ever seen (it's not in this reel). You'll have to watch the video to find out ;)

Featuring an appearance by .welgama who had lovely things to say about the final photos.

10/02/2026

'Decay'
I (re)discovered this car many moons ago but hadn't had a good opportunity to shoot it. Unfortunately it only looks good from one angle that I found so far.

However, one night last month, my chance came when a severe warned storm passed overhead. Getting to this car was a bit of a challenge, at one point requiring me to crawl along the mud through the mangroves to avoid contaminating the scene with muddy footprints. Pretty scary moments when big powerful positive cloud to ground bolts were raining all around me. Definitely one that I just left the camera out in the rain hoping for a good strike.

This was one of two strikes that were aligned the way I wanted it to.

It's super interesting to see what the years of saltwater exposure did to this old car. All steel and iron had decayed almost beyond recognition, but the plastics looked almost brand new.

This car could tell some stories for sure. An interesting addition to the many wrecked cars on the mudflats.

29/01/2026

TLE Thursday
Red Sprites, a type of rarely seen high altitude electrical phenomenon can be so intricately detailed. Shooting with a longer lens helped me capture that.

You may notice that some sprites appear to form in a ring. This one isn't super obvious but it does appear to be the case here.

A new YouTube video is in the works, and it may be my best one yet. Don't forget to head over to my channel and subscribe to see it when it drops in February.

22/01/2026

'Aurora in the Kimberley!?'
I didn't have high hopes of anything spectacular since at 18 degrees latitude we're quite far north and it's also cloudy as heck, hence the lack of a coherent composition.

After getting a faint pink glow after sunset, I gave up on shooting the southern lights as a big band of cloud rolled in. I decided to give it one more go when a gap appeared and lo and behold, a series of faint blue beams could be seen on the camera. Blue is quite rare, occurring only in very strong aurora events and can be as high as 500km up. Ironically, being so far north probably helped with that. Its crazy that the beams almost covered the entire frame of my very wide angle lens from thousands of kilometres away.

Anyways, they didn't last long but that's not the only cool image from this night. Stay tuned for more!

Shame I couldn't get the angles to work, but sprites + aurora would have been cool! I also had to push this image quite a lot. Definitely not naked eye visible but all the data was there in the raw file.

04/01/2026

New video out!

Sky Fire is a storm-chasing film about searching for red sprites — rare upper-atmospheric electrical discharges that appear far above powerful thunderstorms....