phenomenon

Photographer Captures Sailboat at the End of a Rainbow

A photographer in England has captured a once-in-a-lifetime photo of a sailboat passing through the end of a dazzling rainbow right where the colorful light meets the surface of the water.

Yosemite Firefall: A Photographer’s Guide in 2024

We photographers generally have long lists of projects we want to do and then we have our bucket list items -- those things we can only hope we someday get a chance to shoot. As a nature and landscape photographer, the big three on my bucket list were the Subway at Zion, Fly Geyser, and Yosemite’s Firefall.

Watch: Strong Winds Create ‘Reverse Waterfalls’ in Australia

Did you know there's such a thing as a "reverse waterfall"? Perhaps more appropriately called a water rise, the phenomenon is caused when extremely high winds batter a cliff face, and it happened over the weekend at Royal National Park just outside Sydney, Australia.

Photographer Captures the Rainbows in Hummingbird Wings

Australian photographer Christian Spencer has spent 19 years living in Brazil's Itatiaia National Park, and one of the things he has focused his camera on is the beautiful sight of sunlight passing through hummingbird wings. His project is titled Winged Prism.

Photos of Frozen Waves in an Alpine Colorado Lake

Every once in a while, the natural world can surprise us, inspire us with something unexpected and unique, particularly to the eyes of an artist. Such a moment came when I made my first visit to a specific alpine lake in Colorado, revered for its location amidst towering craggy spires and the stark reflections it can cast on a calm morning.

‘Rain Bomb’ Captured by Airport Cam

Microbursts are intense small-scale downdrafts that can dump a huge amount of rain on a small area in a short period of time. From a distance, the phenomenon looks like a pillar of water crashing down on the Earth. In Arizona, an airport security camera just captured one of these "rain bombs."

Why Bad Photographers Think They’re Good

Did you know that the worse you are at photography, the more likely it is that you think you're great at it? It's a cognitive bias in psychology called the Dunning–Kruger effect. Here's an inspiring 9-minute video by photographer Jamie Windsor on how you can avoid falling into this common mental trap and actually become a better photographer.

How the Rolling Shutter Effect Works

Rolling shutter is the answer to why concrete bends, propellors break up, and trees turn to jelly when you're filming them while either you, or the object, is moving quickly in front of certain cameras.

When a Camera’s Frame Rate is Synced to a Helicopter’s Rotor…

YouTuber Chris Chris captured the above video showing what happens when your camera's frame rate is perfectly synced to the rotation speed of a helicopter's rotor: the blades are frozen at the same angles in each frame, making it look like the helicopter is magically floating around with frozen rotor blades.

Astronaut Captured Blue Lightning on Camera from the ISS

For years, airline pilots have reported seeing unusual lightning phenomenon that we don't get to witness from the ground. Luckily for us, astronauts on the International Space Station have a perfect vantage point, and one of them did capture "blue lightning" while orbiting the Earth.

Photographer Captures Light Pillars in the Icy Night Sky

Photographer Timothy Joseph Elzinga was woken up by his 2-year-old at 1:30 a.m. last Friday when he noticed what looked like colorful auroras dancing in the night sky. After shooting a beautiful set of photos of what he saw, he learned that it was actually a phenomenon called "light pillars."

Capturing a Rare Lunar ‘Fog Bow’ Under the Northern Lights

Over the years I've seen lots of different phenomena in the sky, but one that has been on my bucket list for quite some time is the very rare lunar fog bow. I've seen photos of it, but I've never managed to capture it in real life... until now.

How a Combat Photographer Named a Phenomenon to Honor Soldiers

While embedded with troops in Afghanistan in the late 2000s, war photographer and writer Michael Yon captured numerous photos of the sparkling halo that can appear when a helicopter's rotors hit sand and dust. Upon finding that the particular phenomenon didn't have a name, Yon gave it one that honors two fallen soldiers: the Kopp-Etchells Effect.

Photograph Earth’s Shadow in the Sky at Sunrise and Sunset

I never get tired of seeing our closest star set below the horizon, and seeing how the landscape changes as the warm light gets fainter by the minute. Every sunset has its personality depending each location, weather and season. One beautiful thing about a sunset is what happens right after the Sun has set. If turn around, you can slowly see the Earth shadow rising from the horizon.

Microburst Photographed from a News Helicopter

Photographer Jerry Ferguson was shooting from a news helicopter this week when he spotted a microburst over Phoenix, Arizona. In the right place at the right time, Ferguson managed to capture remarkable photos of it.

Photos of ‘Firefall’, When a Yosemite Waterfall Looks Like Lava

For a short time every February, when conditions are just right, Horsetail Falls in Yosemite gets transformed by a phenomenon known as "firefall." When the sunlight hits the water just right, the waterfall looks like molten lava flowing down the side of El Capitan.

Photographer Sangeeta Dey was there to see and capture the firefall this year, and her above photo has been going viral.

This is How Cameras Glitch with Photos of Propellers

If you've ever photographed spinning airplane propeller or helicopter rotor blades with your smartphone, you may have found that the spinning blades were turned into bizarre shapes in the resulting photo. What you're seeing is distortion caused by a rolling shutter, when a CMOS sensor captures a scene by scanning across it very quickly rather than capturing the entire frame at once.

An Incredibly Rare Photo of a Quadruple Rainbow

New Yorker Amanda Curtis was waiting for a train in Long Island, New York, this past Tuesday when she spotted something incredibly rare: a quadruple rainbow in the sky. She quickly snapped and shared a photo of it online, where it became one of the most talked about images over the past couple of days.

The Gem-Like Turquoise Ice Found on Lake Baikal

Russian photographer Alexey Trofimov calls Lake Baikal "the gem that does not need to be cut." It's the oldest, largest, deepest, and clearest freshwater lake in the world. Every winter, as temperatures plummet to well below zero, the crystal clear lake water forms brilliant gem-like ice that glimmers in the sunlight.

Photographer Captures Amazing Meteor Explosion Mid Time-Lapse

It's a day of awesome astronomical phenomenon on PetaPixel. We started off the day by sharing a stunning time-lapse by photographer Maciej Winiarczyk in which he captured noctilucent clouds and the aurora borealis at the same time.

And now, as you get ready to hit the home stretch and finish Monday on a good note, we have yet another amazing (and accidental) time-lapse capture: While photographing the 2013 Perseids Meteor Shower last week, photographer and designer Michael K. Chung was fortunate enough to capture an actual meteor explosion.

Photog Captures Two Spectacular Natural Phenomena in the Same Time-Lapse

Earlier this month, photographer Maciej Winiarczyk captured a rare and beautiful celestial light show. While shooting a time-lapse in Caithness, Scotland, he was treated to not one but two stunning natural phenomena when his camera captured noctilucent clouds and the aurora borealis at the same time.

Photographer Captures Rare Photograph of a Sprite with an Aurora

Check out this aurora photograph captured last Friday night by photographer Mike Hollingshead. See those small red squiggly lines in the sky? That's an extremely rare form of lightning called a sprite. This photograph is one of the only times a sprite and an aurora have been captured in the same frame.

Commercial Features Water Drops Frozen With Sound and the Camera’s Frame Rate

Earlier this year, we shared a crazy example of how you can make water drops look like they're frozen in midair simply by passing the water over a speaker and using sound vibrations to sync the drops with the frame rate of your camera. Well, Japan's largest music channel, Space Shower TV, has taken the idea and turned it into clever commercial. What you see above is ordinary footage using this trick -- there's no fancy CGI trickery, reversal during post, or high-speed camera footage involved.

Camera Synchronized to Chopper Blades Creates Amazing Illusion

Here's an old-ish video that's been making the rounds again lately (viral videos are like viruses -- they don't go away very easily). Titled "Camera shutter speed synchronized with helicopter blade frequency," it shows what can happen when your camera is synchronized with the RPM of a helicopter's rotor blades. The resulting footage makes the helicopter look as though it's just floating in the air!