Spring brings more stormy weather, but, more opportunities to take photos:
As I was thinking about the weather in our own part of the world, we all get excited to see what spring can bring. We have beautiful warm spring like sunny weather one day, and then the next day, we have snow again. But, that how spring is here in the Rocky Mountains.
This is actually the time to get brave and capture the type of photos that are unique. The spring type flowers that can survive the harsh winter storms that come and go. They are truly a beautiful contrast…. and something that may be a selling point if you are good enough, and willing enough to capture this type of photo. Look for those opportunities in the spring. But what if you don’t get snow in the spring, but just a lot of rain.
Seems that there is in other parts of the world a lot of rain. How do you go out and get good photos when there is so much rain around you? There again, some of the best photos are those who are brave enough to get wet.
How do you get photos in the rain without damaging your expensive equipment? The above photo was actually taken from inside the house, but with a large telephoto lens, so that the camera equipment was not out in the rain. Do you have a large lens that you can do that with? You could take that kind of photo from your car as well, but, be brave enough to go out in the rain. You will get some amazing photos.
As warmer weather approaches and it seems warmer and easier to get out into the rain, it is not hard to feel like getting out in the rain. There are some beautiful portraits that you can get in the rain, people having fun in the rain. There are a lot of people who simply enjoy being in the rain. My recommendation is that you get a camera that is waterproof. If you are a serious photographer, you will have something that will never stop you from taking photos. I keep one in my camera bag, and I have a camera that I feel will perform for me in any type of condition. There are many out there in the market, but the one I use now is the one from Pentax:
This may not be a current model anymore, but the newer model is even better than this model shown. Pentax makes great optics, it is a durable camera, and has features that will allow you to do just about anything. Take it on the ski slope, in the mud, if it gets dirty go rinse it off (that will freak someone out). It is just one amazing camera. And it will allow me to take pictures when I just don’t want to take my big DSLR camera.
The nice thing about rain pictures is that there is not usually a lot of contrast in your photos because the sun is covered up. So, you just get even tones in your light meter readings. So, you can generally just concentrate on composing the photo, getting the features you want of the wet world, the reflections in the puddles, etc.
If people are just enjoying themselves in the rain, then certainly get more photos of people enjoying themselves in the rain:
Credit: Wolfgang Roschen
Imagine being able to capture some of these amazing photos. All because someone thought to have a waterproof camera at the time. There has to be more than one person out there who takes these type of photos. When disaster strikes, I am always grateful that there is a photographer who has the sense of mind to take pictures of what is going on, instead of people with their cell phone cameras who don’t really know how to compose or take decent photos. It is so refreshing to get good pictures during a disaster like this. PHOTOGRAPHERS PLEASE ! Be prepared to take photos of these disasters so that if documentation is needed there is a good photographer out there doing it.
Get an underwater camera and take photos of what is going on during storms, during volcanic eruption etc. I don’t care what is going on, we need a real photographer who will take photos of these disasters.
If there is one thing I would like to point out to you in this blog more than anything is have some kind of good camera with you all the time. There may be times, in storms or harsh conditions, that it does not make sense to bring out the big, nice DSLR. But, you need a backup camera at that time and I would recommend a waterproof, shock-proof, damage-proof, type camera like the one I have mentioned above. It may be worth it in the long run if you claim to be a photographer.
