The most beautiful rainbow

[snopes]

Comment: Is this an incredible photo or a great PhotoShop example?

To cause a rainbow, shouldn't the sun be behind you? Looks more like a flare from the camera lens being pointed directly at the light.

[stalker]

I think the sun is behind. The front of the top of the tree in the center and the trees in the distance are lit up. The darkness in the foreground looks like cloud cover.

Looks like a fairly standard double rainbow... I've seen them pretty frequently all of my life -- I've seen them in Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado and California.

I agree with stalker... the sun does appear to be behind the person holding the camera, and from the looks of things he's down in a little bit of a hollow, and it's probably either sunrise or sunset. Without any sort of directional indicator, it's hard to tell... most mornings I've still been awake the light has a somehow clearer quality. Sort of blue or yellow depending on the cloud cover. So I think this might be afternoon light, which I tend to see as more orange or red hued.

Thats totally a guess though as to time of day -- just saying the picture gives me a definite feeling of "afternoon". And a lot of areas seem to get afternoon rain showers throughout the summer months, so that would kind of make sense.

Originally Posted by stalker

I think the sun is behind. The front of the top of the tree in the center and the trees in the distance are lit up. The darkness in the foreground looks like cloud cover.

Could be. Also, the sky "inside" a rainbow is often brighter than that outside. Explanation.

[Troberg]

Given the big difference in light levels inside and outside the rainbow, I'd say that it's some kind of lens flare, possibly from some kind of filter. On the other hand, the rainbow does not extend into the ground, so it might be a photoshop as well.

[Nick Theodorakis]

It looks a little overexposed, and perhaps it had some tweaking with brightness or gamma settings, but it looks plausibly not-heavily-'shopped to me. Others have pointed out that the sky within the rainbow is actually brighter than outside it.

Nick

They at least got the double rainbow right (note that the colors run in opposite directions).

I would think they modified the brightness level of various sections to get the colors and such to come out. For example, you can see detail in the foreground shadow yet the sky did not bloom out.

I could see this be a "natural" shot with some "enhancements" to get it to really "pop".

And I would not call it "The most beautiful rainbow" as I've seen better.

I agree with the others that it looks like a real image, possibly enhanced in color balance/saturation (I rather doubt it), but otherwise real.

Yes, the sky inside the arc of the rainbow is indeed somewhat brighter than the sky immediately outside the rainbow, because of the optical effects that create the rainbow. In the case of a double rainbow, as in this case, the sky outside the outer rainbow should be slightly lighter again, though it doesn't look to be the case here. This isn't reason to think it's fake, maybe just because of the cloud densities behind, the brightness difference is not apparent.

And to answer Lady Neeva, yes, it is either just at sunset or sunrise. The center of a rainbow is always directly opposite in the sky from the sun (which is why you never see a rainbow at noon--the rainbow would be directly below you). In this case, the center of the circle made by the rainbow appears to be at or just below the horizon, which means the sun is very near the horizon (i.e. just rising or setting) behind the photographer. I don't think it's possible to tell from this photo whether it's rising or setting, since there are no other directional references.

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