Chasing the Rainbow

Picture: The end of the rainbow over trees & forest in a valley near Hat Creek, Lassen County, California

Click here to see the photo larger.

I took this image last fall after leaving the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in remote Lassen County. I saw the rainbow starting to form, and chased it down on one of the bucolic side roads that ran through the quiet valley. Not long after returning from this trip, I posted an image that showed the other end of this rainbow coming out of a nearby farmhouse. However, looking at this other side, I felt I’d never been so close to the end of a rainbow in my life. It was literally “right there.”

But there is an odd thing to chasing rainbows. Like the elusive pot of gold that is said to exist at the end of the rainbow, no matter how much you chase them, you can never catch them. Since biblical times, and the tale of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood, the rainbow has symbolized the end of difficult times, and the promise of something new and better. No matter where we find ourselves in business or in life, we usually want something more or better. Similarly, when we see a rainbow, something inside of us drives us to want to get closer, to actually reach the end. Yet just like the proverbial carrot on a string dangled in front of the stubborn donkey, the rainbow presents its ephemeral nature by receding away from us every time we move towards it.

Yet the keen observer will notice that the rainbow represents much more than the promise of something better to come in the future. Its true reality lies in the beauty of the moment, the present, the here and now. Physics and ocular mechanics dictate that no two people ever see the same rainbow. For each of us, it is a personal vision unique to us and where we are in life at any given moment. With the awareness that the rainbow always recedes from us as we move towards it, should come the realization that the rainbow moves with us. By shifting our position awareness laterally, we can effectively move the end of the rainbow to where we want it, rather than endlessly run towards where we think it is.

By moving myself to different positions on the road for each shot, I was able in one case to make one end of the rainbow come directly out of the farmhouse, or in this case, pick exactly where on the tree line I wanted the rainbow to land.

And so it goes again with business and life. Coming out of 2009, I felt more personally out of balance than I had in several decades. A significant portion of this was due to my accident and recovery, the impact that period had on my business, and my recent hibernation to complete my latest book project. However, on a more general note has been the immense amount of changes going on within the photographic industry and the economy at large.

Rather than add to the songs of negativity that seem to abound, to add weight to something already out of balance, sometimes it is better to shift your position laterally, and let your rainbow follow you.

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PS: on a processing note this image had to be one of the most demanding and specific images I had worked on in a long time. By that, I mean that the image told me what level of postprocessing it would allow. Even a couple points of adjustment too far on the levels, Hues, vibrance, or saturation, would cause a solid, artificial-looking line of distinction between the colors. While the web conversion may not show it as well as my master tiff file, it was most important to maintain a smooth gradations between the colors, rather than any straight edged abrupt color changes to occur.