Chasing Rainbows

The sky was rumbling with thunder and sheets of rain were falling when I left home yesterday to run some errands. Simultaneously, the sun was shining brightly. I looked to the east, and I saw a bright, full rainbow, and at the very end of it, a neighborhood church. The tall white steeple was gleaming in the strangely intense, rain-filtered sunlight. Beautiful! I needed to get that picture!

I slowed down and began groping for my camera with one hand. Somehow I couldn't pull it out of my purse. I drove slower and slower -- still couldn't extricate the camera! Finally, I stopped in a driveway so I could look in my purse and use both hands. The door on the battery compartment of the camera had popped open and was jammed into the corner of the purse pocket. Also, one of the batteries had fallen out.

I fixed all that and then looked to see if I could still get the rainbow and the church in a photo. No, I had gone too far down the road. The view was obstructed, and also the sky had changed.

Rainbow over a soybean field

I drove a little farther, and suddenly the rainbow was a bit brighter. I pulled into another driveway to try to get a picture. As I opened my car window, a spray of rain hit me. A stiff wind was blowing straight into my camera and my face.

I took several pictures of the rainbow here and at another spot farther down the road. This was the first picture that I took and the best that I got. All the others have strange blurred spots in them that I think were caused by raindrops on the lens of the camera.

I read once that the difference between a professional photographer and an amateur is that the pro doesn't run out of fresh batteries. I think another difference is that a pro sees the picture and gets it, whereas amateurs like me see the picture and start fumbling around.