Where Rainbows meet the Earth

[Bibhav Behera]

This is my first image for 2015.
This was shot in a waterfall hidden deep in one of the coffee estates in Chickmanglur. The sunlight peered through the mist from the waterfall and created a beautiful rainbow near it. It was a magical moment and a sign of beautiful times to come in the year ahead. Wish you all a very Happy New Year again! :)

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 17-40 f/4L USM with B+W 10 stop ND Filter
SS 13"
f/10
ISO 400

Full frame image. Comments and critiques welcome.

[Mrudul Godbole]

A very Happy New Year. A lovely photograph to start the new year :). The smooth flowing waterfall looks nice. The rainbow is a bonus. Nicely captured. Thanks for sharing.

[Bibhav Behera]

Thank you Mrudul. A small help, can you please drop the 's' in meet's' in the title.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

A feast to our eyes and mind. Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Very soothing yet positive vibe in this picture. Thanks for sharing.

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Lovely. Any other angles?

TFS

[Bibhav Behera]

Thanks everyone.
Abhishek, just posted another perspective.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Lovely image. Nice way to start the new year watching such soothing images. This reminds me of my childhood days when we used to get so excited on watching a rainbow.

Curious why you used ISO 400. ND filter is used to reduce the light and get the shutter speed and aperture at the desired range. Here you could have gone down 2 stops to choose ISO 100 or 3 stops to choose ISO 50. Shutter speed below 1/15 gives you a smooth water flow. So you could have still used a slow shutter speed.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Bibhav Behera]

Hi Sabyasachi,
I did take a few shots with lower shutterspeed at ISO 100. But the effect of the smooth flow of water was not as silky as I would like it. Attached below is one of the compositions. It did however give a more prominent rainbow which was not the case with the ND filter.

SS 1/25" (+0.7)
f/10
ISO 100

I could have obviously taken the aperture all the way down to f/22 for a lower shutterspeed but even in that case the shutter speed would not have been in the 4"+ range to completely smoothen out the water at the base. The water falling down I agree would need only about 1" or lesser to blur.
At ISO 400 the 5D Mark III handles noise pretty well and the B+W Filter shows very slight reduction in quality hence I used it.