Kat Eye Studio

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Portland Photowalk: The Report

Our photowalk in Portland on October 10 was presented with two major obstacles: The Portland Marathon, and rain. Now, you would think in a place that is known for it’s rain, that would not deter anyone. This was before my Exploring with a Camera: Rain post though! Life, traffic and rain got in the way and we had quite a few cancellations.

So it was down to three of us: me, my sister Laurie (in town visiting me for the weekend), and Jenny of Sugarsnap who had helped me plan the walk. We met at a Starbucks in NW Portland and then, juggling umbrellas and cameras, we went to see what we could see. It was a beautiful neighborhood, with fall just starting to show it’s colors. I enjoyed capturing the beauty found in the rain, and chatting with Jenny and Laurie as we walked around. And falling in love with Jenny’s lens – a 50mm compact macro.

Here are a few of my photos from our little walk around the neighborhood. You’ve also seen some of the photos from this outing in the Exploring with a Camera: Rain, Curly Fence and Share Your View: Rain posts. Stop by Jenny’s blog to see her photos too!

Laurie (left) and Jenny (right)



Beautiful trees, just starting to change.
Flowers were still blooming! (Happy Purple Tuesday!)

A bit of color for the season to come…

This poor little tree seemed confused about the season.

My only pumpkin shot of 2010!



Time to head home…

It was great to meet Jenny, and to find another person who loves photography as much as I do! It is fantastic to have been able to bring another online friendship into real life. A big thank you goes out to Jenny, for planning the details and braving the rain! I look forward to seeing more of her, when we move back to Oregon next year. And hopefully a few more people, if we plan a photowalk sometime when the weather is nicer. Until then… ciao!

Jenny (left) and me (right) – Fast Photo Friends!

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Share Your View: Rain

I love how the rain fills up these paw prints, and provides the contrast of light and dark on the concrete sidewalk. Can you just imagine the chagrin of the dog owner as the dog traipsed through the wet concrete? Who knows when it happened, but the perfect prints left behind made me smile when we came upon them during our rainy Photowalk in Portland. (Post on that coming soon!)

It’s been a week since the Exploring with a Camera post on Rain. Have you been lucky enough to get some rain in your area in the last week? Did you get out in it and shoot? I hope, if life graced you with rain, you had the opportunity to take photographs. We had tons of rain here on Monday, and I was able to capture some beautiful images myself.

But today, it’s time to share your view of the rain. Recent or archive shots are welcome, link to them with the widget below (viewable on the blog). I can’t wait to hop around and share some blog love with all of the participants – you guys always inspire me and make me see things in a new way!

Note: Please use a permalink to a specific blog post or Flickr photos, so that we can find the image you intended to share later. Thanks!

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Words for Breakfast

Yesterday, it rained. And rained and rained. I seem to recall that last week I wrote the words, “When life gives you rain, take photos anyway!” in more than one place. Well, here was my chance to live up to my words or to eat my words. I decided to live up to them, as words for breakfast don’t sound too nutritious. My shoes were soaked and people might have thought I was crazy, but I had a big grin on my face and I managed to get this image for the “Fall Color” prompt in Picture Fall.

I realized with yesterday’s rainy situation that this blog keeps me honest with myself, if nothing else. I mean, if I’m going to write about it here, it would be false to not follow my own advice. I think you would eventually see the truth of the matter, feel the hypocrisy come through, and abandon me to my own devices. I would be writing in my own little dream world.

Since I would rather be connecting with the real world, with real people, I’m going to have to assess myself honestly. Flaws and all. Thankfully, so far, I haven’t had to eat any of my words for breakfast.

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Exploring with a Camera: Rain

 

With the change in seasons, in the places I’ve lived the last 12 years or so, we wave good-bye to the consistently sunny days and welcome the wet. Rain will be a consistent part of life for the next few months as winter comes on, with the occasional break in the monotony for snow or sun when we’re lucky. A rainy day is a great time to curl up under a blanket, with a book and a cup of tea. It is also a great time to get out and photograph!

 

A while ago I wrote a blog post that said when life gives you rain, you should take photos anyway. Today let’s explore the ways to capture the beauty to be found in the rain…

 

The light is completely different in the rain. First off, it’s usually cloudy during the day, which provides softer, indirect light. Second, the wet surfaces reflect the light in completely different ways than dry surfaces. The photo at the top of the post is a good example of this – the leaf and the stones are highlighted by the reflections of the light. What would be an interesting composition for it’s contrast when dry, gains even more interest for the way the individual elements stand out from the light on the water.

 

This photo from Orvieto, Italy is a daytime example of how the wet ground reflects the light, drawing your focus along the ground from the bright doorway in the top left down toward the scooter in the bottom right.
The wet ground in this photo of Bath, England at night serves to contrast and highlight the row of benches along the sidewalk. As I mentioned in my Exploring with a Camera post on Night Photography, wet surfaces at night can add much needed light for taking photos at night.

Not only is the light reflected, but you can great image reflections as well with a smooth surface or a puddle. The thin layer of water on this smooth concrete makes a wonderful mirror for the leaves on the ground.

This puddle in Piazza San Marco in Venice serves to reflect the geometry of the famous tables and chairs, making a more interesting composition than the tables and chairs alone.

And while we’re talking about puddles, how about capturing some splashing through them? Of course, this image is a bit more sedate than most puddle-splashing pictures, a capture of Italian rain fashion more than splashing but you get the idea. The movement of water in the puddle along with the reflections makes the photo more than just photo of rainboots.

Out in the rain, look for ways the water moves across and off surfaces. This restaurant table was so highly polished that the rain water beaded up into interesting shapes, a nice backdrop for the flowers.

Look for the drips ready to fall…

Look for the drops that grace the leaves.

It’s also fun to capture people in the rain. They are more “anonymous” with their hoods and umbrellas, hunched up and hurrying along. I like to capture groups of colorful umbrellas, as on this bridge in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Or the lone traveller, trying to get someplace at night in Venice. People with umbrellas are quite the artistic staple, if you look at paintings through history.

Here we have quite a few different elements that I love in one rainy shot… umbrellas, multiple reflections, at night, and it’s Venice. How could you go wrong?

There are so many ways I have yet to capture the rain, these are the images I’m still looking for:

  • Looking out of a window covered in raindrops. Focus on the drops, with the scenery out of focus behind.
  • Rain spilling out of our very cool dragon-shaped rainspout or off the edges of eaves.
  • The rain in a downpour – I want to figure out how to capture the “look” of the world when you look through rain.
  • Drops of rain splashing in puddles – oh those perfect, rippling circles just tantalize me!

So, how do you do shoot in the rain without ruining your camera? Here are a few tips:

  1. Use an umbrella. If you have someone along with you, ask them to hold it over you and your camera when you shoot. If you don’t have that option (or don’t want to ask your companions to hold your umbrella every 15 seconds), a bigger umbrella works better than a small one for this “solo” technique: Rest the handle between your neck and shoulder with the umbrella resting on the top of your head. This will enable both hands to be free and your camera to be covered while you shoot. It does take some practice though!
  2. Find sheltering spots. Store awnings and overhangs, doorways, under trees, etc. can be great places to pause and have a little bit of protection from the rain while you shoot. Watch out under trees though – the drops might be less frequent but they are often bigger!
  3. Keep your camera protected between shots. Work out a system that enables you to quickly and easily but your camera in and out of your bag. I carry my camera across my body, and my camera bag the same way. I can take my camera in and out of my bag easily, so when it’s rainy I can put it away between shots but easily get it out for the next one. Another thing I will sometimes do, especially when it’s light rain, is just tuck the camera between my body and the bag. It’s mostly protected but easily accessible. When it’s heavier rain though, I keep it in the bag!
  4. Use a camera cover. You can buy rain covers for your camera, but I’ve found them to be kind of pricey and I don’t want something bulky I have to carry around “just in case” it rains. Another practically free alternative for an SLR camera is to use a plastic grocery bag (you know, the ones you get in just about any grocery store) and a rubber band. Tear a hole at the bottom of the bag near one corner, this is where you put the lens looking out. Use the rubber band to secure the bag at the end of your lens, then just wrap the bag up around the camera with the handles coming around the back. When you want to shoot, just open up the handles and hold the camera as normal inside the bag. It might look weird, but it’s cheap and easy, and a spare bag wrapped up with a rubber band does not take up much space in your camera bag.
  5. Don’t worry about a few drops of water on your camera. I don’t. A few drops on my equipment have never hurt anything – I just make sure that it doesn’t get completely wet. By keeping the camera mostly protected in the ways I’ve described above, my equipment has remained in good working order even if I shoot in rainy weather. Keep something soft and dry handy to wipe off the lens though, you will experience drips now and again!

Whatever you do – don’t just put the camera away when the clouds start rolling in. Enjoy the different photo opportunities that the rain provides.

Remember this motto – “When life gives you rain, take photos anyway!”

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Dark Nights

September.
We turn our heads reluctantly from summer,
start to look toward fall.
Morning crispness, school books.
Endings and beginnings,
sadness and possibility.
Enjoy every last golden moment of this month.
Squeeze out the last drops of summer and
hang it on the line to dry –
our memory of sticky days and thunderstorms,
wind in the leaves and crickets chirping.
These will keep us warm and cozy in the
long dark nights to come.

This is just something I randomly wrote down this morning in my journal, after I wrote in the date. It seemed to fit with this picture from Bath, the row of chairs at night, cool drops of rain on them, empty of tourists – foretelling of the seasons to come.

I am finding black and white photos very interesting lately. Before I left on my trip, I participated in the Mortal Muses black and white challenge. It was interesting to look through my photos and join in with some of my favorites. I was even one of the featured photos last week, in Thursday’s post.

Participating in this challenge got me to looking at my black and white photos as a body of work, instead of each one individually. I love color, but I like the feeling that black and white can evoke. The simplicity of light and dark, lines and spaces. It got me to thinking about how I don’t really see an image as black and white when I record it in real time, but when I see the photo on the computer it just asks to be black and white. Like this one, when I saw it in yesterday’s editing, I knew that this was the way it needed to be.

And somehow, the words I wrote this morning, the challenge I participated in last month, the photo I took last week and edited yesterday all came together for this post. I love how that happens.

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When life gives you rain…

Take photos anyway! This photo is from a back alley in Orvieto, a hill town in Umbria. I love the old scooter, the textures of the wall, the greenery and the reflections of the wet ground. A peaceful little scene, I can almost feel the cool, damp air.

The two days we spent in Orvieto on our April were rainy. I found that I wasn’t as inspired to take photos – have you ever tried to take good photos with a two handed camera while holding an umbrella? Not the easiest thing to do. But the photos I did take, I find that I like. They have a very different mood than the sunny, perfect weather photos. Maybe even a little more character.

As we travel around, sometimes only a day or even less visiting a new place, I have to make the most of that time. Regardless of the weather, my goal is to capture some essence of that place. I don’t have the luxury to visit again and again, to study a certain place in all light, all weather, all seasons. And you know what? I find that’s ok. I’ve learned that when life gives you rain, you take photos anyway.

As usual, another life lesson we can take beyond photography or our other creative endeavors. Today, here in Italy, it is rainy. I think I’m going to make the most of it!

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