Nature - Landscapes, Seascapes, Sunsets & Sunrises etc

I will split this page once there is enough good material to make it worthwhile.

Not just a Rainbow

I've been watching the revised Alex Filippenko series of lectures for TTC on Understanding the Universe and he explains the creation of rainbows very well, he also went into supernumerary bows which I hadn't heard of before. Just the next day a passing shower allowed me to hastily photograph the phenomena!

The basic idea is that light passing through a rain drop will bounce off the inside walls of the drop and exit at specific angles; the light bends differently along its wavelength so splitting the white light into its colour's like a prism does. The supernumerary bows are the blue/green stripes at the bottom of the rainbow that don't fit into the expected pattern of the spectrum. These are patterns of interference attributed to the wave nature of light, in-phase and out-phase creating amplification and cancellation, but this is not fully explained in science at all. I think it fits into the quantum wave-particle duality business somewhere?! More info on this optical mystery can be found here.

The first image was a rushed picture and has been highly over-saturated in Photoshop to enhance the colour's and the supernumerary bows. The second image is a year later; March 2008 - I saw the rain followed by the sunshine and predicted there may be a rainbow and sure enough there was possibly the brightest rainbow I've ever seen. This picture really shows how complex the colouring is and clearly shows four cyan coloured bands; or four supernumerary bows.

Spring has sprung!

The sun is shining and what more excuse do I need to be outdoors with the camera. This shot was nothing serious at all; I'd just popped down to Steve's for a coffee and sat in the garden for a while. All the spring flowers are out and summer feels like it is well on its way now.

This is a Narcissi flower; I remember being taught that at school a long time ago. They are part of the Daffodil family and look very similar except the white petals. I found a bit of info on the Wikipedia page.

The shot was 1/1250th of a second at F5.6 with the standard Nikon 18-55mm lens at 55mm, manual focus. I wasn't doing any serious photography so didn't use a tripod, in the bright sunlight you can always shoot at very high shutter speeds anyway. I'm sure this could be have been better but it always can! Click the image to see the full resolution version; straight from the camera except a slight brightening of the levels in Photoshop.

Taken on the 13th of March 2007

Woodland Waterfall

This picturesque waterfall is just beside Burrator reservoir on Dartmoor. We were up there for a small camping festival called Farmfest not far from Princetown. These three shots were taken with long exposures to get motion blur on the water but using the tripod means the foreground objects such as the trees are absolutely still. It was the first time I had done this so am quite happy with the results.

  

The Sun

I'm not in the best place for sunsets as our coastline faces the east, and I'm not very good at getting up in the mornings so I rarely see a sunrise! However, I know a few spots which get the full sunset over the hills in the distance, again an obvious target for the newbie photgrapher. This is not easy as you must not look directly at the sun, it only takes a moment to cause irreparable damage to your eyesight, my method is using the left eye to position the camera and basically using a lot of guess work to get focus; these are probably auto-focus anyway. The left image was taken locally; zoomed right in. The right image was taken the same weekend as the above waterfall shots; somewhere near Princetown.

Galmpton Creak - River Dart

Another seriously photogenic place I visit is Galmpton Creak, it is a private boatyard but parts of it are open to the public. This picture really shows the peace and tranquility of the moment.

Taken 10th December 2005 - 1/1600th sec shutter speed - ISO not recorded - F5.6 - Focal Length of 55mm