Surprise After Sunrise

I took this shot from the park across the road from my house one morning after sunrise. I was turning into my driveway after watching the sunrise in Wattle Downs, when I spotted this bright and vibrant rainbow beaming down to the farmlands in Karaka, over the Manukau Harbour. The second time I’ve ever seen the actual end of a rainbow so it was very intriguing. You can actually see a very faint second rainbow above it too.

It only lasted for a couple of minutes though before it faded away, so I had to be quick with the camera. If I had a helicopter or a boat I would have gone on a hunt for the pot of gold at the end, lol.

Rainbows are caused by light that enters a drop of rain and is bent and split into an array of colours. This is because each colour of light gets bent by a slightly different amount. The different colours then reflect off the back of the drop, and when they pass through the front of the drop again, they are bent even more. A rainbow is always directly opposite the sun from the observer and the rainbow's location will appear different for observers at different locations, but it is always directly opposite the sun.

The building to the right is the Counties Manukau Rowing Club. It was originally called the Weymouth Rowing Club until it’s name changed in the year 2000. You can see the light reflecting off of the white paint from the sunrise, and gently lighting the grass.

No saturation added, all I needed to do was lighten up the grass by increasing the gamma a tiny bit in that selected area, and crop part of the playground out of the frame. Reduced the noise from the darkest clouds as best as I could, didn't have much time to get the manual settings perfect as it was gone in a flash.

Thanks for viewing.