>>>According to these:
>>>
>>>http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2009/06/hacker-photo-picked-up-by-ap-wall.html
>>>http://www.crh.noaa.gov/sgf/Safety/summer_safety.php
>>>
>>>#18 is most likely legit. He's a photographer for the Carthage Press.
>>>
>>>I've seen a lot of lightning strike photos in the past though that were fake.
>>
>>The lightning in #18 looks completely unlike any other pic. Many of the branches have been traced/outlined in black, like he got his 10 year old daughter to trace it for a school project. Or, he thought the smaller branches weren't impressive enough in the original image, so he tried some sort of bad edge or contrast enhancement filter or some other poor Photoshopping job.
>
>Looks like simply bad jpeg compression, or a cheaper CCD in the camera. Or what you say, tried to enhance the rest of the image so it wouldn't be just white lines in the dark.

He's supposedly a professional photographer, he should know what he's doing and have adequate equipment.