When I woke up, the sky looked ominous, but it wasn’t raining yet. We drove to Rockvallen because we knew that we would find some orchids there while not straying far from the car in case it would start raining. I had an absolute blast shooting different flowers, and by the time it started raining, I was also already done with the flowers. It didn’t look like it would keep raining all day though, so we headed to Mittåkläppen and Djupdalsvallen. Since it was still raining, we had waffles. Wise from my waffle overdose the last time, I only had one… The rain let out for a bit to do some shooting, but after a few sunny rays the clouds came back and the rain started again. We decided to break off the shoot and wait until the evening to see if there was any change in the weather.

I was about to drive out, when I thought that I might as well have a closer look at the river while I was out there. I found some marshland and discovered more of the same orchids we had seen before. But suddenly I struck gold – orchids I had never seen before! It was still raining, so I rushed back to car and got the 100mm macro with StormJacket pulled over it to allow me to shoot in the rain. By the time I was back to the Pseudorchis albida straminea, the rain had stopped and instead I got plagued by the insects. I endured them until I figured that I had my keeper image, and left.

For the evening shoot, we were determined to get away from the mozzies and gnats and the best place for that is above the treeline. As we started driving towards Flatruet, the rain started as well. By the time we reached the Ånnfjället picnic site, it wasn’t raining on us anymore. It was raining elsewhere though, and we got a nice rainbow to shoot. But the tiny little gnats really were driving us crazy… there were so many that when I zippered up the Bugshirt hood, I got gnats inside the jacket. I didn’t particularly enjoy that.

Once we got above the treeline, we found another rainbow. By now the gnats were gone and we were only pestered by mosquitos, and even they seemed to be only half interested in us. When the rainbow disappeared, we continued our way to the top of Flatruet. It’s a popular place for camper vans and this being July, it was fairly crowded so we drove to the old house a few hundred meters towards Ljungdalen. I thought that the it would make a nice subject, being lit by the evening sun as it was, but after a couple of shots I decided that it wasn’t that good after all and instead concentrated on the rainbow I had spotted. It vanished quickly so I moved to another location and discovered yet one more rainbow to my great delight. I shot it, and decided that I should try to find a better foreground. So I moved a little, shot it again, and decided that there would be yet some better foreground to be achieved, if the rainbow just please would stay there… so I moved, took the shot, but I still wasn’t all happy so I moved once more, and now I finally got down to business. The rainbow was very obliging!

All in all, I am very happy with today’s crop. Yesterday was a bit of a downer because of all the rain, but looking at today’s images, the rain didn’t spoil anything. On the contrary – I would have missed all those beautiful rainbows, if the weather hadn’t been as changing as it was!

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From the ”duh” department: Polarizers are no good with rainbows. I wanted to cut the glare from the foreground lake surface and attached a polarizer. As I turned it, all the colours of the rainbow disappeared… literally! I put the filter back in the bag.