The trouble with fancy photography (which National Geographic is famous for) is it can make things look far more spectacular or "otherworldly" than real life. Apparently this lightning can't usually be seen by people, occur above the clouds, and in the blink of an eye. You could be looking right at it and not notice anything otherworldly. Well that's not impressive. You can also see otherworldly things just by watching water move up close or looking at space through a telescope, or using an instrument to visualize EM fields or whatever. I expect those things to be otherworldly because they are.
For that matter I think a large part of what makes anything “otherworldly” is beauty in things unfolding outside our normal experience of the world: I don’t see what distinguishes glorious NG photography from the other methods. It’s only natural to expect that from techniques that let us access phenomena that wouldn’t be perceptible in terms of ordinary human scale or sense of time
My cynicism of NG photography is that you can't go look at the thing yourself and see it the way they show. The pictures are effectively faked though fancy camera tricks. Yea it's fascinating to see beyond our usual senses, but it's also obvious that those things are going to be strange and otherworldly so it doesn't even need to be said. Truly amazing otherworldliness would be something you can (in principle) stand there and ogle with your own senses.
