Jul 25
Local showers
I had planned to drive out to photograph the sunset, but a small thunder front moved in and had me stay at home. The weather was very local though, a raincloud above my house but clear skies in front. This created the unusual phenomenon of a rainbow on blue sky, so I hurried around with the camera to find an angle where there wouldn’t be a streetlight or a chimney sticking out at the bottom of the frame.
When the raincloud had passed, I gave up my plan A and went for the nettle-leaved bellflowers instead. I’ve missed them in their bloom every year so far, but this summer I was determined to catch them and I knew they had just started to open. I figured it’s easier to catch a sunset than this nettle-leaved-bellflowers-after-the-rain-in-evening-light opportunity, so I had to make the most of it!
Would be nice to shoot a rainbow sometime
Ok, there’s white form of this bellflower species 
Didn’t know it before, but life is a learning process!
I was in great pains to ID this campanula… for years, I thought it’s some garden species gone wild (which it actually is in this case) and couldn’t find it in the wildflower flora, until I finally saw in one description that it can also be white. The problem is that in this particular location, they are all white – I had been looking for a white bellflower and of course it wasn’t to be found anywhere!
The thing with rainbows is that while you get to see one relatively often, you rarely get to choose the foreground (and background) for it. For all of my rainbow pictures, sometimes I’ve been lucky and sometimes I’ve just had to try to make the most of a bad setting. But other than that, all you need is a rainguard for the camera and you’re well on your way to photograph rainbows.