Excellent shots.
You know I once heard on a science show on TV many, many years ago, that lightening actually strikes up and not down, which I then made the mistake of sharing with my mates in the pub after we were about six pints into the evening - cue ridicule and laughter for about the next decade...

But what do you know, I was correct all along and here is the proof written for all to see in the following paragraph taken from this government website:
Lightening stikes up, you need to scroll down a bit to find this paragraph though.
Does lightning strike from the sky down, or the ground up?The answer is both. Cloud-to-ground lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up. A typical cloud-to-ground flash lowers a path of negative electricity (that we cannot see) towards the ground in a series of spurts. Objects on the ground generally have a positive charge. Since opposites attract, an upward streamer is sent out from the object about to be struck. When these two paths meet, a return stroke zips back up to the sky. It is the return stroke that produces the visible flash, but it all happens so fast - in about one-millionth of a second - so the human eye doesn't see the actual formation of the stroke.
Dave