When I shot this photo with my Canon DSLR I was still getting used to the new technology, having only recently moved away from my original Olympus OM-1 film camera. I was still experimenting and not taking many notes, so I can’t even tell you the exposure settings. All I recall is that it was a fairly long exposure designed to capture the faint double rainbow that had formed after the storm. The camera was on a sturdy tripod and aimed to frame both the rainbow and the mountain, providing a sense of scale. It was about an hour before sunset.
I can’t say by a long shot that this was my best nature photo, but it was certainly one of my luckiest. First, only about 20% of rainbows are doubles. [Technically, all rainbows are doubles, but the secondary bow is too faint to see 80% of the time.] The really lucky part was the lightning bolt photobombing my carefully composed shot.
I’ve seen lightning strike that mountain (Gavilan Peak) many times during thunderstorms. But the fact that it happened during this (maybe) 5–10 second exposure is the amazing synchronicity. Notably, the lightning flash lasts less than a second. For the rest of the exposure, light from the sky overlays the pixels that recorded the lightning, washing out the true brightness of the bolt.
So this is a heavily processed image. I tried to correct as many of the issues as I could using Photo-Paint but had limited data to work with. This is as good as it gets, and I refuse to use AI to artificially enhance it.
If you’d like to see my best double rainbow shot, taken many years later, click here.
Double rainbows with a lightning bolt are not that rare, as you’ll see if you follow this image search. Not surprising really, since same thing that causes rainbows (water falling from clouds) also gives rise to lightning. Most of those photos are way better than mine, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy browsing them.
In the end, this photo is still special to me because it was more about luck than technique. I happened to be in the right place, with the camera pointed in the right direction, when lightning struck during those few seconds of exposure. Sometimes cool photos are simply a result of pressing the shutter at exactly the right time.
Next Week in Sky Lights ⇒ Scientific Accuracy of Sci-Fi Movies