Springtime rainy days are among my favorite kinds of weather for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they make for exceptional photo opportunities. I have written about this extensively here on Weekly Fifty but it continues to hold true: it’s almost difficult to not get good photos on cloudy, overcast days during, or just after, a good soaking. Mornings and evenings are also good due to the light being low in the sky, and when you combine all of the above… *chef’s kiss* That’s how the underlying conditions unfolded when I set out to take this picture, and the results played out almost exactly as one would expect.
On a recent rainy morning I drove out to to the OSU Botanic Gardens on the west side of town, camera in hand, with the specific intention of taking several pictures of whatever I might find: leaves, flowers, decorations…the Gardens are always changing and, in many ways, you never know what you’re gonna get. This scene was the first thing I came upon after exiting my vehicle so I figured I might as well give it a try and see what happened. (One nice thing about digital photography compared to its analog counterpart is that you don’t have to save your shots for when you really need them. If you see something, you might as well take a picture, and even if something better comes along, you’re not really sacrificing anything.)
One of the trickiest parts of photographing a scene like this is trying to figure out what to focus on: the buds, the branches, the bubble…everything all at once with focus stacking? There’s a lot of choices but, generally speaking, you can’t go wrong with trying to get the bubble tack sharp and let the rest of the photographic chips fall where they may. It’s often the brightest part of the composition and, as a result, the element that the viewer’s eye is naturally drawn to, which makes it kind of a good general baseline to shoot for. It’s not always easy though: autofocus is not super reliable in these situations, and if your aperture is too wide the depth of field can quickly become downright unwieldy. But when it works, it sure does work.
I shot this at f/13 to get a pretty large depth of field, while ironically remembering that when I purchased my macro lens I kept wondering if f/2.8 would be wide enough. (In reality I almost never use f/2.8 because it’s almost always too wide when doing close-up photography, but that’s just one of those things you learn with time and experience.) I always use back-button focus which made this shot a lot easier: I took a handful of shots while rotating the focus ring, knowing I would get some that were sharp and plenty that were not. No matter though, that’s what large memory cards are for :) I also kept the background in mind, adjusting my point of view so that the drop of water was set not against the light gray sky but the rich green grass on the berm behind. The rain gives everything a glossy shimmer that simply doesn’t happen on any other kind of day, and in the end I was pleased to get this and many other pictures which you’ll be seeing here on Weekly Fifty in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them.
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