The circuit I used to detect the light from the lightning was a very simple circuit that looked like the above circuit diagram. I used a cheap infrared photo transistor because that’s what Radio Shack had. I noticed that the sun, my house lights, and lightning all pump out plenty of infrared light for this circuit to detect. If this circuit is not sensitive enough try changing the value of the resistor. Larger resistance values should help sensitivity when there is only a little infrared light and smaller resistance values should help sensitivity when there is a lot of infrared light.