The Importance of Looking Around
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received regarding photography has been to look backwards, or at least look around to get unique perspectives on a particular shot. On a rare rainy day in Orange County, I was on my way home from work and thought about trying my hand at taking some photographs of moving clouds. I turned around while waiting for a traffic light to turn green and saw this massive rainbow! In fact, it turned out to be a double half rainbow.
Of course, I had to shoot it. The only problem was I didn’t have my camera with me, so I raced home (safely), praying that the sun wouldn’t set too fast. Unfortunately, when I left my house, it was gone! However, I was determined and drove around the city, frantically searching for this very vivid rainbow. Luckily, I found it! And it’s a double rainbow! Take a look in the upper left corner.
I’ve always wanted to see a half-rainbow in person and just had to pull over in order to admire it in all its glory. I tried to time the shot right after my windshield wipers passed, but the rain was coming down a bit too fast to get that done right.
As the hour was right between the transition from golden hour to blue hour, the sun had cast this really warm glow into the clouds that I thought would make a unique shot framed at a local condo complex.
To think that this whole adventure started by just looking around while waiting for a traffic light! You never know what you’ll find if you simply look around.
White Balance, Shooting RAW, and Polarizing Filters
I rarely shoot in auto white balance (AWB), as I like a bit more creative control over the white balance. But, if you like to shoot in AWB and get caught up in the moment and forget to switch to another color temperature, shooting in RAW allows you to change your white balance during post-processing without losing detail in the photograph or blowing out certain colors. Another great reason to shoot in RAW! All of the images in this post were shot using white balance set to cloudy (6000K).
I’ve heard that shooting rainbows with polarizing filters can accentuate different colors depending on how the polarizer is rotated. This is something that I’ll have to try in the future!
A Bit of History of Rainbows
In Greek and Roman mythology, the rainbow was a bridge created by the goddess Iris connecting us to the immortals.
In the 3rd-2nd centuries, Alexander of Aphrodisias first tried to describe the rainbow. It was Aristotle who first officially included the rainbow as a physics phenomena. However, he originally thought the rainbow only had three colors (apparently the number of colors was a hot topic back then!). It wasn’t until the 17th century that physicists actually started understanding what rainbows were.
Maybe some of you remember the famous “Double Rainbow” video back in 2010. And the second image in this set is a double as well! Double rainbows form when light entering rain droplets bounces around more than once before exiting.
Fun fact: a rainbow doesn’t actually exist. Optically speaking, it is just a visual distortion of the sun. So, if you’re trying to look for that pot of gold, you won’t be able to find the actual end of a rainbow!
Comments, conversations, feedback, and messages are always welcome!
Love your writing…keep it up! Thanks for sharing..