I took this long exposure photo at Bethells Beach in Auckland on a
blustery winter’s day. By the time I took this shot, I had already been
waiting 10 minutes for the sun to come out from behind the clouds and
hit the headland for the entire duration of my exposure (I didn’t want
changing light in my shot). I had set my camera up and punched in my
settings, and was about the press the shutter, when a huge gust of wind
blew my camera bag over near my feet. I bent down to rescue and secure
its contents, and when I came back up, before me was a spectacular large
rainbow right over the headland, dipping perfectly behind the point. So
I pressed the shutter and seconds after the photo had been taken, the
rainbow disappeared.

Bethells has always been a mystical place for me. Bethel means ‘house of
God’ which is apt as I often found myself walking and talking with God
out there. I wanted to capture this mystical sense by using a slow
shutter speed to give the ocean that misty look. When the rainbow
appeared, the story I was trying to tell in this photo took on extra
meaning, as in the book of Genesis, a man called Jacob is asleep at a
place called Bethel when a stairway to heaven appears in his dream, with
God at the top of it. I like to think that the rainbow in my photo is
Bethells Beach’s very own stairway to heaven, where when people can walk
its sandy shores, they can connect with God. The title, ‘Dreamscape’
encompasses both the mystical sense of the place as well as the
reference to Jacob’s dream.