You are driving in your car and the entire world around you appears wet through your rain-spattered window. Then, you see the sky stained with colors. You roll down your window to find a rainbow.
Grab that camera and make it yours!
If you are lucky, you might have a rainbow right above you on a day such as this!
You never know exactly when a rainbow might materialize; and even if it does, you don’t know if it will be on your side of the horizon because only then will you be able to view it. It isn’t really that unpredictable, though. When you have bright sunshine interacting with a delicate shower of rain, you can be pretty sure of spotting one a rainbow.
Don’t forget to mount your camera in its place!
You can’t possibly think of ways to mount or stand your camera in order to take a picture of the rainbow’s arch every single time, though, can you? In landscape photography, we make use of tripods most of the time and the same applies here. Since the conditions around us are gradual, but continuously changing, make mounting adjustments in such a way that you capture the rainbow image perfectly.
Pick out those perfect backdrop hues.
Rainbows have seven colours, so when you try to capture them in your photograph you should make sure that they stand out distinctly against the backdrop. You cannot, obviously, choose your backdrop because obviously whatever is around you is what is going to be seen in the image. Instead, pick out the appropriate angle at which to click your picture to get a brilliant photograph of the rainbow, even if it’s only a part of it. Just go for the perfect assembly of depth, extent, and colors. Since the rainbow has only light shades, a dark, cloudy background with mountains or hillocks will give you an excellent photograph.
Make your shot a wholesome one.
Make the photograph complete by shooting it from the appropriate position. Capture that perfect section of the rainbow where the surroundings are also captured in a way that makes your picture outstanding. Your check-list before you click the perfect photo should be this.
* Choose the right spot: Place yourself at the right spot from where you get a total view of the rainbow along with the surroundings.
* Can you capture the entire rainbow? – Did you know that a rainbow, any rainbow is in fact a completely circular formation? We can only see an arch because that is the only part visible in our horizon! It is indeed a fabulous trick of nature! So shooting the end-points of the rainbow is rather interesting. Show where it begins. That is, putting that point into your frame -where the rainbow kisses the earth.
Your camera has brilliant options to zoom in and out using lenses of several powers. They give you pictures of excellent resolution, depth and clarity. If you want to photograph the entire arch within one frame, use powerful lenses. It shouldn’t end up giving you a blurred image in spite of a high magnitude of capture.
Before you click that picture, look around yourself too!
Keep a clear ground around yourself before you get down to clicking that button. Avoid objects that might distract or divert your attention.
Bring out those contrasts and separate those colors!
Appendages like filters can be attached to the camera lens. It is an excellent aid which makes each color look distinct. This will result in a picture that will have vividly contrasting colour and saturation gradations. You will obtain a high quality, and supremely effective photograph of the rainbow itself.
Slit adjustments and the totality of the image.
Increasing or decreasing the lens aperture will alter the depth of the picture but it doesn’t influence the resulting image quality of the main object you are trying to photograph.
Ever seen that secondary rainbow?
When you can see that bright, spectacular rainbow with distinct bands, you can look right above it and try to make a fainter, more blurred rainbow, with overlapping bands. If you can snap this off into your image, there is nothing quite like it!
~Zahid Javali