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Tuesday, July 8, 2014 9:43PM CST

St. Louis metro lightning and fireworks: July 4-7

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and shut down my operation.

In September of 2025, my work is generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I'm being forced to shut down my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.

"Storms and fireworks" has been the theme for the first part of July in St. Louis. Three rounds of storms on Monday the 7th provided several sunset/nighttime lightning opportunities. This at twilight:

This same line of storms stayed active after sunset, providing a backdrop for the Cardinals walk-off win with fireworks at Busch Stadium:

Although that image is a stack composite, there was actually one single exposure that captured lightning and the last gasp of the fireworks together:

Early Sunday morning, the low-level jet fired up a few storms south of New Baden. This is a 21-frame stack composite of the scene:

And finally, 4th of July fireworks. Due to the ongoing Arch grounds renovations, the city's display was moved to Forest Park. Although that meant there were no traditional Arch or skyline compositions available this year, a host of (illegal) backyard displays in East St. Louis provided this shot (a 7-image composite) viewed from I-64 at Caseyville:

Last year a lot of people in east st Louis had those illegal fireworks. They were everywhere in the parking lots (the streets became those for that night) right next to parked cars, even one on top of a car!
- Posted by Tim