In Camera ... Postcard AG146

This picture was captured late on an October afternoon. It had been a day of mixed weather, quite windy and some heavy showers. I had been working in the office all afternoon and wondered about getting out and down to the beach for an hour. Around 15.30 it suddenly went very dark, there was a rumble of thunder and the rains came down really heavy. I thought that was the end of my visit to the beach but, just after four, I saw a glimmer of brightness out to the west, it was still raining hard but I thought to myself "There might be a rainbow if the sun breaks through".
I quickly grabbed the camera bag and drove down to the beach by the Leisure Centre; as I arrived the light of the sun burst through a gap in the clouds low on the western horizon. I ran onto the beach setting up the tripod as I did so. Looking inland, to the east, behind me the dark thundery sky created a wonderful backdrop for a perfect arc of a rainbow. It was now only about five minutes before sunset and the light coming through that gap in the clouds would not last very long. It strengthened as I mounted the camera on the tripod and created a brilliant double rainbow. I managed to obtain three decent images before the sun disappeared into cloud again low on the horizon and the rainbow faded away. I was fortunate with my positioning being directly in line with the sun and the figures as you can see from the long low shadows in the picture. The arc of the rainbow covered quite a distance and this image is composed from two overlapping pictures, the only way I could capture both ends in one shot.