Brian Luenser
For years, I’ve tried—and failed—to capture that perfect lightning strike. You know the one: the sky splitting wide open, lighting up everything below in a dazzling, electrifying flash. I’ve been too early, too late, or the storm just fizzles out before I can even get my camera ready. But leave it to local photographer (and self-proclaimed Fort Worth historian) Brian Luenser to nail it. On December 22, Luenser captured a single bolt of lightning touching down in downtown Fort Worth, a stunning shot that had us all in awe. This wasn’t his first time catching nature’s raw power on camera, though. Luenser has been chronicling this city he loves through his lens for years, capturing the beauty and the storms that roll through it.
The day Luenser took this shot, he’d been glued to his radar app all morning, watching the storm unfold. But this wasn’t your typical Texas thunderstorm. No, this was something different — more thunder than rain, with bolt after bolt slicing through the sky. “It was the craziest storm I’ve ever seen,” Luenser says, still struck by the power of it all. “It wasn’t even raining much. Just a constant barrage of thunder and lightning. I kept thinking it was over, but then I’d hear more thunder, and think, ‘Maybe it’s not done yet.’”
That’s when the alert came through — lightning detected within six miles. “And I’m thinking, ‘Alright, this is it.’ I grabbed my gear and rushed to the balcony. I just knew this might be the shot of a lifetime.”
At 11:10 a.m., lightning struck. “It came out of nowhere,” he recalls. “Loud, close, and there was no mistaking it.”
And hit it did — just half a mile away, near the Hillside Neighborhood east of downtown Fort Worth. But what made this particular bolt so stunning wasn’t just its proximity. It was the sheer perfection of the strike. “There were no offshoots, no striations. Just one clean, sharp line,” he says. “It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Capturing lightning is no easy feat. Luenser relies on a mix of timing, tech, and a bit of luck to get the shot. His go-to equipment for such a shot is his trusty 17mm wide-angle Canon lens, which he uses for his “lightning shots”.
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“With today’s cameras, you can zoom in and crop in on the action,” he verifies. Luenser also swears by a lightning trigger, a device that detects the flash of lightning and automatically takes the shot. But despite all the high-tech gear, he knows it’s all about being in the right place at the right time.
“The hardest part is getting a single bolt. If I use longer exposures, I end up with multiple bolts in one shot, and it looks like some AI-generated mess. I prefer capturing one perfect strike.”
That’s exactly what happened when the bolt hit the ground. Luenser didn’t even see it at first. “I heard it before I saw it, and I thought, ‘Man, that was huge!’ Then I looked, and there it was, right in front of me — clean, sharp. When I saw it on my computer, I thought, ‘Wow. That’s it.’”
As with most things in life, the aftermath was almost as intriguing as the moment itself. Luenser hadn’t had a chance to check the exact spot where the bolt hit. “I’ve been meaning to go check it out,” he admits. “I’m sure there’s a scorch mark or something there.”
This wasn’t the first time Brian’s lightning shots had caused a stir. Over the years, he’s captured thousands of bolts across the skies of Cowtown. But this shot? “It really took the cake”.
Luenser is a living testament to the idea that sometimes, it’s all about being ready when the storm hits.
“I’ve got time on my hands,” he says. “I’m retired now, so I can just wait for the right moment. That’s the secret. Being in the right place at the right time, and being ready when that lightning strikes.”
