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Friday, April 29, 2011

End of the Rainbow

Although there was no pot of gold, this end of the rainbow provided a strong photo.

Tourist exults as he poses for a photo beneath a rainbow on the big island of Hawaii. (© Michael Maher).


The Photo:
Rainbows are challenging to photograph, not because taking the picture is so difficult, but because it’s tough to find brightly colored rainbows to make a strong photo. It’s hard to predict when a rainbow might occur, so you must be ready quickly when you see one. Driving along a vast open field on the Big Island of Hawaii (in the state of Hawaii), a light rain was falling, the sun came out, and a large rainbow appeared. I stopped the car and took several photos of the rainbow over the horizon, but there was nothing in the photo to illustrate the size of the rainbow. To make the photo stronger, I needed to put a person -- myself -- into the picture. I set my camera’s automatic timer, lined up the photo I wanted, ran into the open area, and posed under the end of the rainbow (where there was no pot of gold to be found), as the camera took the picture. There was no special trick to capturing the rainbow in a photo, for what you see is exactly what you get. However, rainbow colors are not always bright, so you may often need to add a little color enhancement to make the rainbow stand out more prominently in the picture.

3 Tips:
1) Rainbows are easy to photograph but difficult to find.
2) Include an object or person so the picture communicates the size of the rainbow.
3) You may sometimes want to enhance the rainbow colors in the final picture, since rainbows don’t always appear as bright colors.

1 comment:

  1. Did you realize that you're making the same gesture as your mom in your previous "I'm so big!" post? Guess it runs in the family! Great shot of the rainbow. I'll have to remember the trick of putting someone in the shot so the rainbow's size/girth is more apparent.

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