I had to use the search facility of this blog to establish that this is the first photograph of a rainbow that I have posted. The fact is I've taken quite a few photographs of this phenomenon but never secured any that I considered good enough to display. But, on a recent evening walk round the village, at the end of a day that had started to brighten after hours of steady drizzle, this one appeared. It wasn't a complete rainbow - it quickly fades to nothing beyond the left edge of the frame - but it was bright and against an interesting sky, so I took a few shots of it.
A rainbow is a marvellous, if unlikely, meteorological phenomenon, something that invariably provokes a response from people when they observe one. It's small wonder that the Vikings saw it as a bridge between earth and Asgard (the place where their gods lived).Or that the leprechaun's pot of gold is supposed to be hidden at a point below the end of it. Mankind has spun so many good stories around the rainbow that it almost seems churlish to repeat that it is simply the refraction and reflection of light in water droplets, something that was first conjectured over a thousand years ago and more scientifically explained by the likes of Roger Bacon and Descartes.
photograph and text © Tony Boughen
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
