Good Things Before 7a.m.

I was going to sleep in until at least 7:00a.m. The dog had other plans, she wanted to come up and say hi. While laying in bed we got to see a few streaks of lightning cross the sky outside our window and the sun was starting to come up. The combination of the rainstorm and sunrise made the light take on redish hue.

Of course I had to jump up, slip on shoes, grab camera and go outside at 6:30.

I walked across the yard trying to figure out what would be best to photograph in the light. The bean field next door is usually a good bet, but I noticed a rainbow arching over our sweet corn!!



Just before going back to the house I happened to look toward the northwest. No way, a full rainbow! Those are sort of uncommon. While I did have a 18-50mm lens, but it wasn't quite wide enough. I couldn't back up any farther, trees became an issue blocking a portion of the rainbow.

I wished for a wider angle lens or a fisheye or something.

No luck.

I did my best to register the same bit of land in each of my photos as I rotated myself holding the camera to get the rainbow in its entirety. That worked out fairly well. Here is the result stitched together before I edited it further.



I did do some photoshop work to even out the exposure, cover the seams and extend the missing bits of ground. You can see a spot along the rainbow where the fit wasn't perfect, but I think it worked out pretty well.



I also had my ipod in my pocket. I do have a pano app on it, though it will scold you if you don't have the unit directly vertical. I had to tilt the ipod to try and get the appropriate ration of rainbow and land in the frame, about a 15 degree tilt away from 90. So, the app didn't work. For that the DerManDar app loses points. I will search out a better pano option.

We are heading to the Iowa State Fair today. I'm sure that I will have the opportunity to take lots of photos. We will see if I find any images that top the full rainbow this morning.