Jeffrey Sullivan's photostream Pro User

Looking across Topaz Lake on the California / Nevada border a couple of nights ago, there were some huge "Sierra Wave" lenticular clouds forming.  

Fortunately I put two cameras out to shoot time-lapse sequences, because for at least part of the time with one of them I forgot to switch the lens into manual focus.  That's really ironic, since for landscape I most often use a wide lens and use it in manual focus, but because I was using f/8 at a long focal length, I wanted the camera to focus more accurately than my eyes could.  So when I went back out to check the cameras, it had gotten dark enough that one of them was hunting for focus, and missing shots in the sequence as a result. That's what I get I suppose, for departing from my normal workflow.

The Three Sisters mark the California/Nevada border.  The North Sister on the left is in Nevada, the South Sister on the right is in California, and the Middle Sister straddles the two states, with its peak lying just into California.

Last night I caught a sun ray rainbow, just before sunset, at Topaz Lake on the Nevada/California border.  

You may have noticed that rainbows move as the sun moves.  White light contains all of the colors of the rainbow, and the rainbows we see are simply that light separated out into various wavelengths, which we perceive as colors.  This doesn't happen like it does with a prism, where the rainbow comes out the back side of the prism and that color-separated light is projected onto something.  Instead, raindrops do separate the colors of light through refraction, but instead of it escaping out the back, that light is reflected back out of the raindrop at a 42 to 43 degree angle.  So everywhere you see rainbow color is a raindrop, and if you draw lines back from that rain drop to yourself and to the light source, those lines meet in roughly a 43 degree angle.

Someone standing a mile north of you may see a rainbow, but their rainbow will be coming from a different set of rain drops making a 43 degree angle back to the sun, and their rain drops at that angle will also trace a "rainbow-shaped" arc in the sky.  This is why you can see rainbows while you drive, and they will appear to move and follow you (at that same angle to the sunlight) as you drive.

So as a photographer, if you don't like where the rainbow is, move!  As long as you don't move so much that "your" rainbow doesn't fall off the end of the column of water it's coming from and disappear into dry air, you should be able to place the rainbow where you want it.  Similarly, if you see the sun striking a column of water and the sun seems to be close to the right angle, simply move until you catch that 43 degree angle and can see and photograph the rainbow you anticipated that it was making.

Even when I'm not out actively pursuing photographs, sometimes they arrive at my doorstep anyway.

Last year I had the privilege of being able to bring several groups of photographers into America's best preserved ghost town, Bodie State Historic Park, at night, and one time we returned before dawn the next morning for access to the interiors of the buildings as well.

On this night we arrived to see storm clouds and isolated columns of rain on the horizon, but the sun was low so it was shooting golden light under the dark clouds. We did have a few minutes when the rain passed over us, but that only improved the conditions, giving us rainbows and wet rusty cars to shoot. The clouds soon cleared up so we could shoot the Milky Way and star trials over Bodie's landmarks.

I'll be leading both types of workshops again this year, so if photography at sunset, sunrise and pursuing night shots in a ghost town sounds like fun to you, drop me a Flickrmail and I can provide you with more details.

This image was featured in Flickr's Explore, highest position: #199 on Friday, May 17, 2013

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Here's another shot from La Jolla in April. Some of the locals were complaining about the weather. It was a lot more comfortable than the blizzard I had left behind in the Eastern Sierra, so I thought it was great! The cloud cover was nice too, adding texture compared to alternatives like blue sky or fog.

This image was featured in Flickr's Explore, highest position: #68 on May 16, 2013

You can see which of your photos have been in Explore using Scout (simply insert your user ID in the space provided at this link: bighugelabs.com/scout.php?username=23183960@N00&combi...