Panoramic View of the North Shore and Water Front at 7:30ish

Timing is everything.  I could come up with hundreds of stories of how timing made the difference between what was and what wasn’t.  Of course, I suppose that is true for every moment in every day for everyone, so perhaps it’s not particularly remarkable.

But there are certain events that occur in a moment and then disappear–you either see them or you don’t–dependent on their timing and yours.  Rainbows are a great example of transitory events that occur infrequently enough that most of us are still amazed whenever we happen to witness one.

On this particular day, at 7:30 PM, I had just gotten back from taking a break to walk Tisen.  I’d decided to run down to a common room in our building with great views to try out the panoramic feature of my iPhone camera from the balcony.

My 24-70 mm lens just wasn’t wide enough at 8:30ish

I guess I was inspired by the sky while I was walking Tisen, but I don’t remember.  The clouds were interesting enough to enhance the panoramic view, but it was too early for any interesting sunset color.  So, around 7:30PM, I was out on the balcony taking the panoramic shot above.

After shooting several panoramics and deciding I liked the one above, I returned to my office and went back to work.  About an hour later I got a text from my husband telling me to get down to the exact same spot I had been shooting from an hour earlier because there was a huge double rainbow.

Knowing rainbows cannot be counted on to hang out waiting for me to get my equipment together, I grabbed what I thought was my tripod bag, my DSLR with a 24-70mm lens on it. and my iPhone (of course) and left for the common room so quickly, I was half way down the hall before I realized I was barefoot.  Not having time to return for shoes, I kept going.

I manage to capture the rainbows with the panoramic feature on the iPhone, but the 2nd rainbow is faint

I got to the clubroom, and immediately realized the bag I’d grabbed was not my tripod bag.  Rather, it was a bag of lighting stands.  For those of you who are not into photography, lighting stands are not at all helpful when what you need is a tripod–at least not if you need it quickly.  Perhaps with enough time and ingenuity, a lighting stand could be rigged into a temporary tripod.  But a rainbow is not the time to try this.

So, handholding my DSLR, I took a few shots of the huge double-rainbow visible end-to-end in the sky and realized my second problem–24mm wasn’t wide enough.  I couldn’t fit the double rainbow into the frame.

While I got out my iPhone and started taking more panoramics, my husband kindly ran back to our place to grab my tripod and 16-35mm lens for me.  He returned in record time.  By the time I switched my lens, there was only one strip of rainbow still visible.  Maybe next time.

At 16mm, I might have gotten both rainbows, but it’s hard to say for sure