I spent a fabulous day on Lake Shasta with my brother Arthur, sister-in-law Susan, and Mady, the Golden Retriever. Bobo had to stay at home. The sun was out, the water was smooth, and the temperature was perfect for a fall day on the water. Every time I come to Redding, my brother assures me we’ll see bald eagles on Lake Shasta but until today, we had never seen any and to add insult to injury, whenever I’ve been along, he has not even caught a fish. Today, all that changed. Arthur spotted the first bald eagle flying toward us as I was fiddling with my camera attached to the tripod. While I frantically tried to extricate the camera from the tripod, the camera strap got caught on the tripod and I was left not only without photos, but without even seeing the eagle. I did finally manage to get a few photos when the eagle took off from the tree in which it had perched but when I finally got him in focus, he was flying into the sun. We later saw a family group of four eagles soaring high over head but they were so far away, I got nothing. Shortly after, Arthur caught a beautiful sixteen inch, one and a half pound rainbow trout. But, since I still had my 70-300mm lens attached, I was too close to get any decent photos of the fish. So, although we saw eagles and Arthur caught a fish, I have nothing to show for it.
So, today’s photo is neither an eagle nor a rainbow trout. It is a rainbow cloud, a weather phenomenon that occurs when the clouds, made of tiny ice crystals, are at the right angle to the sun, and the crystals refract the sunlight (much like a prism) into the colors of the rainbow.
Focal Length 200mm
ISO 100
f/20
1/100
Curves Adjustment
Fabulous capture! I’ve seen this phenomenon but never knew what it was- or why! Leave it to you to have an explanation! Really beautiful!
And your day on the lake sounds fabulous!
[…] of the car to photograph it. I’ve featured this phenomenon in my blog in a past post called Rainbow Clouds a couple of years ago but I took that shot was near sunset up in […]