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November 22, 2006

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As I stated a few weeks ago, I did play with a few options for my fake lightning and rainbow pictures, and here's the other one.

 Merging the two was actually rather simple since my software gave me a lot of various options for combining them.

Although the pictures might look rather impressive as they are, if it were real, I originally imagined that it wouldn't actually be possible to see a rainbow at the same exact instant as a lightning strike. Since the rainbow is actually a refraction of light from the sun, I first imagined that the lightning would be so bright that it would saturate the sky with light, and the rainbow would vanish for that exact instant. However, I did find a lot of pictures on the internet of lightning and rainbows in the same image together. So, as fast as the lightning would be, one would probably see the rainbow, the flash of light, and the rainbow would certainly still be there. The same thing would happen with a photo. For lightning shots, I usually have the exposure settings for longer periods, and the camera would certainly be able to capture both in the same shot.

So, although I might not ever really be able to capture both a rainbow and a lighting strike within the same shot, the thoughts did give me the theory that a lightning strike could possibly create it's own rainbow on the clouds opposite the strike. Where the refraction of sunlight that would normally cause a rainbow to appear would actually come from the light of the lightning strike itself. This might likely be something that a person would never even see, since the lightning is so bright and fast. It would be just as quick as the lightning itself, and be gone just as fast, and with the focus being on the immense power of the lightning, nobody ever noticed the immediate flash of a rainbow behind them.
So, just as the camera is a great tool for capturing that split second flash of light from the lightning, I might try a little experimenting with the concept myself this next year and see if I can actually discover and capture the event myself. If it's even possible.

 
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