I was fortunate enough to catch both ends of a rainbow that appeared over Boston during a recent visit. I didn’t have my DSLR with me that night but I think I did a good job capturing things with the camera from my pocket. To make these images I first took several exposures of each scene by focusing on different brightness levels within the frame. Back at the computer I used an HDR (High Dynamic Range) plug-in to merge the best parts of the exposures into a single image. The results are good and look pretty natural, the way that our human eyes see things as opposed to a single camera exposure.
Standing on the edge of the Charles River in Cambridge I spotted a rainbow landing on the John Hancock tower in Boston. This is an HDR composite from three exposures taken with my iPhone. The differences between this and the “properly” exposed original are subtle, but I liked the additional contrast in the sky and the water that the HDR brought out.
While not as clearly defined as the other end of the rainbow, this end landed on top of one of the Massachusetts General Hospital buildings. That’s the Longfellow Bridge on the right crossing the Charles River of course. This too is an HDR composite made from pictures taken with the iPhone.
On a side note, our son was treated for a serious illness at MGH, and we spend a good number of days “living” in that shiny building. Our boy is healthy again and back to a normal childhood, so we did find our pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.
-Josh
