Rainbows can be fleeting. In the summer monsoon season, rainbows can often be seen decorating the beautiful skies of Northern New Mexico. To see a rainbow, you have to be in the right location relative to the sun and the rain shower. If you want to see a rainbow over a beautiful landscape setting, say opposed to seeing one over a strip mall, you need to be lucky or do some planning. Perhaps both luck and planning are required!
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Late on an August afternoon, intermittent rain showers to the north and east of me with the sun setting to the west caught my attention. I was on the lookout for rainbows, given these optimal conditions. To see a rainbow, your shadow, and the raindrops must be 42 degrees apart in angle. Knowing this I began driving in the direction I needed to be.
Soon I began to see a beautiful double rainbow in the sky. The primary and secondary bows were bright and beautiful against a stormy sky over the Sangre de Cristo. The trouble was that the foreground between me and the rainbows consisted of strip malls and gas stations, not exactly in my genre of nature photography.
With some more natural foregrounds in mind that might line up with the required rainbow angle, I kept driving in hopes that the rainbow would still be there when I arrived. All the while, I could see the stunning rainbow over the city scene as I drove.
By the time I reached some pleasing foreground scenery, void of buildings or billboards, the sun had started to set. As I set up my tripod, composing the photo as quickly as I could, I remembered the “red rainbow” effect. An atmospheric optical phenomenon that occurs when the rays from the setting sun have blue scattered out of them, leaving only red-orange colors illuminating the raindrops. The light coming out of the rain forms a rainbow dominated by the warmer tones of the visible spectrum. No purples or blues are visible in a red rainbow.
Any rainbow can be fleeting. You have to enjoy it while the rain and sunlight work together. As the sun moves, or the rainfall changes, a rainbow can quickly disappear. The conditions for a red rainbow are even more short-lived, lasting only a minute or two as the sun sets below the horizon.
I was lucky this day, and I relied upon some previous knowledge of rainbow physics. I often compare nature photography to fly-fishing in the sense that both require luck, skill, patience, and persistence. Luck alone rarely brings that lunker trout to rise to your fly, nor will it result in a great photograph. If, on the other hand, when that lucky moment arises, and you have honed your skills (fly-fishing or photography), then you are more likely to succeed. Patience is a virtue for both activities. Persistence gets you out there in the river, or the field, when conditions may not seem ideal.
How do you feel when you miss that great shot or miss the hookup on a nice trout? If you are like me, hard on myself, I would rather not experience a “lucky” event and miss it (e.g., a failed photograph or lost fish).
When everything comes together, and it all works, that is the most rewarding experience!
