TAOP - N & I - Exercise: Rain

Exercise: Rain

This exercise is to create an image for a magazine cover which has a single subject of rain.

Initially I had attempted to photograph rain falling onto a glass table and capture the impact splashes, see further below. I was photographing it from inside the house with the table pulled up next to the back door. I had great difficulty capturing any splashes in focus. I attempted this with standard and macro lenses and also used a hand held flash on remote to try to freeze the drops but without success. I think I took almost 100 images in total attempting this

When the rain lessened and with a plastic carrier bag protecting my equipment I took this image below. This is of a car roof where the car polish has made the water bobble. In this particular image and the one I've chosen to use, a rivulet of water has run from the car aerial. Using a wide aperture and the camera flash it has frozen the water, giving it an almost oily look at the right hand end. The wide aperture created a narrow depth of field so that the eye is drawn to the centre of the image. The eye can tell the water has / is travelling from left to right and so a dynamic image with implied movement has been created. The flash has also given some reflection to the rain drops on the car and also helped to freeze the water movement.

Whilst falling rain can not be seen in this image it is very clear that rain is the subject even though the surface its on can not be determined.

Examples below of some unsuccessful images:

Whilst this wouldn't have been the final image it does give an idea perhaps of what I was trying to do. The flash has caught falling rain almost as streaks but again at this size are too small to see.

Its not clear at this size but there are 2 crowns created by falling water but not in focus. I have been able to create these indoors using falling water from a pipette and a flash. This could still have been done with multiple pipettes and some helpers to simulate rain fall. Using this subject I was attempting to mislead the viewer that the glass table was a water surface

Failure in this approach after 100 images might before may have meant I would have stopped and regrouped. However before I started I had thought of multiple options, the car roof was the 2nd option, pipettes option 3 had I needed it. Considering the options in advance as preparation and pre-visualisation before picking up the camera is now something I'm doing a lot more of and lessens the chance of missing an opportunity / stalling with lack of ideas and options