Stephen Cheatley Photography

My main claim to fame is the award winning shot of lightning strikes I captured crashing down over my hometown of Blackpool in the summer of 2015 titled ‘Electric Blackpool’. The picture went viral at the time, and appeared in most major newspapers. Lightning storms, particularly with the intensity of the one I captured are extremely rare in this part of the world, with maybe just one or two per year if we are lucky. This statistic makes the shot even more remarkable, and it is now firmly a part of history, which I will talk about as long as I live. The image went on to win the RMetS Weather Photographer of the Year award in 2018, a competition which I helped judge the following year.