Bathurst, NSW, Australia
This shot was taken from the top of Mt. Panorama on the first day of summer, what a welcome! The blue hour is a spectacular time to take lightning photos as you still get the detail in the landscape as well as the bolts in shot. I also had a good yarn to Craig from Country Fruit, always fun to meet others who share a common passion and be able to share photography tips.
This was a single 13 second exposure, ISO 100, f/9. Basically you want to set your camera up for a good exposure of the background where the aperture controls how bright the lightning will appear. If my maths is right and I ran an aperture of f/18 for 52sec I would get the same exposure of the landscape, but the lightning would be barely visible (if at all). This is because the lightning is only there for a split second while the light from the scene is soaking into the sensor for the entire 52 seconds. So basically, if your lighting is over exposed you need to narrow your aperture, if it is too faint, you need to widen it.
http://www.davidromaphotography.com/landscapes