Tower Falls with Rainbow

Tower Falls - Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
EOS 1Ds, 24-70 @ 24mm, 1/60, f/11, ISO 100

If there is sunshine, you can usually capture a rainbow at some point of most waterfalls but knowing the time when it occurs is the trick. The closer you are to the base elevation, the earlier the rainbow will appear in the morning (and later in the evening). For example if the base of a 200 foot waterfall has a rainbow at 8:00AM, the top will have it about 1 1/2 hours later. I knew from Joseph Lange's guide that the base of Tower Falls gets a rainbow at about 8:30AM in June but I also know that ever single time in his book is off by 30 minutes to 1 hour resulting in you missing the rainbows if you plan on arriving close to the time in the book. The morning I got to Tower Falls after driving quite a ways from West Yellowstone I got a nasty surprise. I was there early enough but the trail had completely washed out and was barricaded closed - of course, typical for Yellowstone, there were absolutely no signs along the trail up until the point of closure. At this point I had to scramble and find an alternate way to the base of the falls. Fortunately I still made it after an extra half mile in some treacherous terrain and got a number of shots with a nice rainbow. I utilized a polarizer to punch up the saturation of the rainbow.

As an aside, if you use Joseph Lange's Photographers Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, note that virtually every word written in it about sun angles and times are off. Its like he forgot to change his watch to daylight savings time when he timed these things as most things occur about an hour earlier than his summer times. There are also grave errors about sun angles - in some cases he claims certain falls never receive direct sunlight any time of year. Every single one of them that he claims this for are bathed in full sunlight in June from about 11:00 to 2:00. Some of the photo technique advice is way off too. The book is great as a guide for where to go but for times and technique, stick to your instincts, they are usually right where the book is often not. He likes to suggest mid morning for a lot of things and then use an enhancing filter - hogwash! OK, I'll get off my soapbox now - its still the best book on the subject but needs a complete rewrite in some areas for accuracy.