Horse and lightning

When I look back on decades of picture taking, a few images stand out in my mind as favorites. This is one of them. I originally made this composite in the 1980's with film. I sandwiched two transparencies together and re-photographed that combination. Then in the 90's I used Photoshop to do it again. I had hired a horse trainer who could make his horse rear on command. I purposely waited for an overcast day with a white sky to do the photo session because this made it easy to combine the horse image with another background. Remember, this was before Photoshop, and no one had ever heard of a 'sky replacement' command. I photographed the lightning in Arizona during the monsoon season, which is July and August. Notice how the sheen on the back of the horse reflects the color in the sky. With daylight film, lightning always photographed magenta. What makes this picture particularly strong is the position of the horse's legs. I took this with the Mamiya RZ 67 medium format film camera with no motor drive and manual film advance. I could take only one frame every time the horse reared.