Rainbow web

Photo lesson of the day: when hiking in a redwood forest, don't forget to look up! I'm at that age when my thinning hair can result in sunburn on the top of my knob after a nice day's hike, so I typically wear a ballcap. Downside of that is that sometimes the cap's bill acts as a blinder...and I forget that the forest that I'm hiking through is three-dimensional, and there's really cool stuff high overhead.

On this particular day, we were climbing up through the woods of Niscene Marks State Park in Aptos, and one of party, Jennifer, did what I hadn't: she looked up, and exclaimed at the sight of a leafless tree filled with spider webs, and one in particular that was shimmering with color. Now, I've shot a lot of webs over the years, and occasionally I've seen it where the strand of web will defract the light a little...but nothing like this one.

Some webs capture bugs, this one had captured a rainbow, and stunningly so. Of all the webs in the tree, this was the only one that glowed like this. The web was about 10 feet over head, so I broke out the 70-200mm, and fired away. There was a slight breeze and the web wafted back and forth, the colors changed, waves of blue, green and red floating across the surface of the web.

Moments later, as the sun marched through the treetops, the light angle had changed enough that the color was gone...in fact a glance up at the tree didn't show any webs. For the rest of the afternoon, I made sure I looked up...saw lots of gorgeous scenery, even a few more webs, but not another single one that had captured a passing rainbow.