The Quiet Picture

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!

The day dawned rainy. And windy. Definitely not a flower photographer’s dream weather, but I wasn’t discouraged. It just takes a bit more work, that’s all. I drove to Kallgatburg in search of the narrow-leaved marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza traunsteineri) and I was happy to find them - except now that I looked at one and confirmed the id, I realised that many of those early marsh orchids I was cursing at yesterday were also narrow-leaved marsh-orchid. But now that I was sure of what I was looking at, it was surprisingly easy to tell them apart. That’s learning the hard way, but these are the lessons that I’m sure to remember. Much more efficient than someone just pointing out the flowers to you.

Weather-wise, I had a lucky break at Kallgatburg. When I was walking to the car, it started raining and it kept raining on my next stop, the Alvena lindaränge meadows. It was so bad that I had I not found a new orchid, I wouldn’t have risked getting the camera wet, but as it happens, I did find a new orchid - military orchid (Orchis militaris). And a bonus orchid in a form of a half withered Gymnadenia odoratissima, and now I knew the species for sure. The ones that got me wondering yesterday were not Gymnadenia odoratissima, they were hybrids at best.

The Stormjacket came up the champ, it kept my camera dry and I got my pictures.

Since I had now ticked off two new species, my list was getting short. All that is left are the rarest ones, so now I was just checking my notes to see where those elusive orchids grow. I read that narrow-leaved helleborine (Cephalanthera longifolia) and fen orchid (Liparis loeselii) would grow in Ar, so that was my next stop. I was stunned when I got there - pyramidal orchids growing by the roadside, in large numbers! This is the first time I saw them since that one individual I found two days ago. And then I was also seeing early marsh orchids and ssp. ochroleuca, plus lesser butterfly orchids and marsh helleborine… all in greater numbers that I had seen anywhere so far. As for the flowers I was looking for, I found a withered narrow-leaved helleborine, so now I can stop looking for it - I’m hopelessly too late for it. The fen orchid was nowhere to be seen.

On my way back south, I stopped at Vitärtskällan. It wasn’t on my list, but the entrance to the reserve was right by the road so it was too easy to miss. Nothing new there, just some cows.

The next location to find my elusive orchids was at Slite. Again, it was a miss but there was plenty of other orchids. Can’t believe these numbers… back home there’s one bog where you can find 5 different species of orchids. That’s the most I know of anywhere in that region. Here, 5 species seems like a poor orchid place. At first on my excursions, I kept a count of the number of orchids I saw. Now I don’t even bother… The last time I counted was 8, and I’ve read that there are some places that host no less than 15 species. They are obviously not all blooming at the same time, but still! And the most common orchid? Twayblade, no doubt. Can’t remember a place I’ve visited where it didn’t grow.

Time for one more excursion before I called it a day. Having given up on the narrow-leaved helleborine, I was now hunting for the burnt orchid (Orchis ustulata) which is actually quite high on my wish list. But I missed it again, I did however find mosquitoes. Got my first mozzy bites on this island!

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 picknic 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!

* * *

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.