The flip side of even the worst rainy day, if you're lucky, is seeing a rainbow. Rainbows are such a rare treat that it's tough not to stop everything to photograph one. I've literally pulled the car off a highway to jump out, cameras flying, to get a shot of a rainbow before it faded. Some rainbows fade quickly, others last quite a long time. I remember standing on the patio with my mother after a very violent storm and watching a rainbow over our neighborhood for about 15 minutes before it began to fade. And the rainbow above, photographed just this autumn (2011) was a spectacular double rainbow, horizon-to-horizon, that lasted more than a half an hour--and was very intense for about half of that time.
One of the keys to getting a good rainbow show is, of course, trying to predict them a few minutes in advance by keeping an eye on the sun position as it breaks out of a dark sky. Rainbows occur directly across from the sun--so if you can see the sun beginning to break through the clouds, turn your back on it and face the darkest area of sky you see. If you are sitting somewhere pretty during a storm, take the time to wait out the rain--especially late in the day because if the sun breaks through, it will be at that nice low angle that tends to create more rainbows. In fact, I think that low angle of the sun is largely responsible for the appearance of any rainbow.
It's also great if you can find a pretty or interesting foreground to use beneath your rainbow, but unless you're a storm chaser it's largely a matter of luck. I photographed the rainbow show below in Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park after enduring several hours of nonstop downpour. When the sun unexpectedly broke out, I raced down a trail with a tripod on my shoulder and cameras swinging from my neck looking for a nice rock formation. I climbed about 15 feet up on a boulder to get a clear shot of the rainbow as it grew in the gray sky. In the shot above, I had been desperately looking for an interesting foreground (I didn't have a wide-enough lens with me to capture the entire rainbow--it was that huge!) and suddenly this beautiful red ocean-racing yacht sailed into my frame. It was a gift! There were also rays starting to form around the rainbow and I'd never seen that combination before. Of course, the boat was moving pretty quickly and I was only able to get off a few shots with the rainbow sitting nicely off the boat's bow.
Exposing for rainbows is pretty straightforward, though I would tend err on the side of underexposure because that saturates colors. And since you are usually working with a dark sky, try using the exposure compensation feature to reduce exposure by a stop to two stop. (If you are shooting in RAW format, you can always adjust the exposure and white balance after the fact.) Usually there's plenty of light; I shot exposed the rainbow above (shot on the Housatonic River in Connecticut) at 1/250 at f/4.5 (ISO 400), on a tripod. Again, don’t let especially dark clouds fool your meter into overexposing the scene. Always aim your meter (I prefer to use a center-weighted meter) right at the rainbow and then, to saturate the colors even more, bracket a stop or two under that reading. Rainbows are pretty rare (unless you're lucky enough to live in Hawaii), so my advice is to shoot them whenever you see them even if they're not perfect. You can always use a partial rainbow as a background in a homemade greeting card or as a theme icon in a digital scrapbook.
If you own a polarizing filter, keep it handy when you're out chasing rainbows. By rotating the filter in its mount you can intensify the colors of the rainbow. Be careful though, rotate it too much and you'll erase the rainbow! Keep an eye on the viewfinder, of course, and when the colors look their boldest, it's time to shoot. You can usually saturate the colors even more with a bit of underexposure, either in-camera or later using curves in Photoshop.
Entire Site Contents Copyright 2012 Jeff Wignall
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