Travel Tips

Tip #3: Rainbows
You'll find rainbows when you are between the sun and water droplets of the right size. We most often notice them during clearing storms when facing away from the early-morning or late-afternoon sun, but they can also appear in waterfalls and sprinkler spray--anytime the sun angle and water drop size are right. Keep your camera ready when storms clear, and keep an eye out for rainbows anytime there's water in the air.

When an early-morning or late-afternoon storm is clearing, turn your back on the sun and you just might see a rainbow. While a polarizing filter might enhance the colors, you don't need special gear or techniques to get good rainbow photos. This one was shot with a consumer digicam in "Auto-Everything" mode.

Rainbows can occur anytime you're between the sun and water droplets of the right size. This rainbow appeared in park sprinklers one morning, and was recorded with a 300mm lens on a digital SLR. It's a good idea to focus manually when shooting rainbows; autofocus systems sometimes have trouble with them.

Protection
Water can give you some great photos. But it can also damage your camera, lenses and other photo gear. Take care not to get your gear wet, unless you're using gear that was designed specifically for that purpose. If you want to experiment with rainy-day or ocean-spray photos, buy a waterproof single-use camera, and use that--it should withstand just about any wet situation, and if it doesn't, you're out less than $20.

Shutter Tip
To get long exposure times in brighter light, stop the lens down, and use a slow film or a low ISO setting on a digital camera. You can also use a neutral-density filter to reduce the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor, but ND filters are quite expensive.