Shutter Hunting in the Rain, Yet Again

Shutter Hunting in the Rain, Yet Again

In an effort to escape some of the rain plaguing Fernie last week, I went camping with a friend. I wanted to take the time to just relax and almost didn’t bring my camera, but I convinced myself that if I didn’t bring my camera, I would miss some good opportunities. Thank goodness I did, as I believe I may have captured my favourite photo to date. During the first day of camping, we noticed a juvenile bald eagle flying around the area and landing on a tree quite close to us. I suspect it to be about two years old, but it was massive. We weren’t sure how long it would stay so we didn’t bother to scramble for our cameras, we simply admired it. But the next morning, we noticed it in the same spot and this time we were closer to our cameras, so we grabbed a couple of shots of it. I love how they turned out (specifically the first one), but only if the stick wasn’t in the way!

Photo of a juvenile bald eagle at Horseshoe Lake, B.C.
Photo of a juvenile bald eagle at Horseshoe Lake, B.C.

The first photo is by far my favourite as the bird turned its head to a perfect angle for me to capture them. These photos allowed me to work on similar techniques I used last week in portrait photos. But this time I was shooting almost directly into a backlight so I was unable to make a dark atmosphere around the bird, which I love the look of.

However, for this week, I wanted to focus on something new and relevant to Fernie; shooting in the rain. Anytime I had taken photos in the rain before, I wasn’t quite able to capture the rain itself and you could barely it was even raining. So for my preparation, I checked out a blog from National Geographic where they asked a contributing editor of theirs, Jim Richardson, about some techniques he uses while shooting in the rain. The first thing he suggested was to bring a cover or umbrella for your camera, which I, unfortunately, did not have, so the camera got a little wet. Then he suggested shooting from inside of your car, but the only photo I got from this technique did not turn out so well.

Photo from inside of my car at Mount Fernie Provincial Park, B.C.

So I left my car and ventured into the rain, yet again. One thing I did as I left my car was change the ISO on my camera from 800 to 1600. Before I found the blog on National Geographic, I looked through another one from Skylum that had suggested I turn up the ISO on my camera as that would allow it to be more sensitive to light and capture more colour in the cloudy weather. I quickly checked to see the difference in the settings and it was quite noticeable.

The pictures are slightly blurry but you can see how much the ISO affects the light intake as these two photos have the same aperture and shutter speed.

From this point, I wanted to focus on taking photos that made it obvious it was raining outside. In order to accomplish this, Jim Richardson suggested that I backlight the rain. Basically, this means I should focus on having a light source in my background in order to illuminate the rain or raindrops that are in the foreground. My camera isn’t quite good enough to catch rain falling from the sky, but if I backlight a raindrop falling from a tree, I should be able to catch that. So I sat on the Gorby bridge in the provincial park, faced the sun (or at least where I assumed it was), looked around, and waited. It didn’t take long to find a branch that would work and I immediately started to play around with some photos. The first one I took, however, was not so good. This was because for some reason I switched the ISO back to 800 instead of leaving it at 1600. I think it was the same mentality that caused my moose pictures to be so dark last week.

Photo taken at Mount Fernie Provincial Park, B.C.

Once I corrected the ISO to 1600, I was able to take better-looking photos. To create focus and lighting in the two photos below, I maxed out my aperture at F8.1 (small pupil) in order to create a “subject” in the photo. For the shutter speed, I had it at about 1250 even though it was daytime and my ISO was already at 1600. I just wanted a good amount of colour.

Photos taken at Mount Fernie Provincial Park, B.C.
Photo taken at Mount Fernie Provincial Park, B.C.

Using Jim Richardson’s suggestions, I was able to create the exact type of photo I was aiming for this week. By backlighting the branch, the rain on the leaves is very noticeable, even when it is only a couple of droplets. I will definitely be searching up Jim Richardson tips the next time I head out to go shutter hunting.

2 thoughts on “Shutter Hunting in the Rain, Yet Again

  1. Hi Chayce!

    This blog post really caught my eye! First off SUPER COOL! I don’t think I have ever seen a bald eagle in person before so that is so awesome regardless of the branch in the way you took a really close-up picture and it is very clear! Your rain photos are looking great as well! I feel like being able to catch the perfect photos does for sure take a lot of time and practice. But I think you’re doing great! I can definitely tell the amount of effort you are putting in and it looks like the pictures of the rain become more clear in every photo you’ve shown. At first, I really had to look closely at the photo to see the rain, and then in the last picture, I can see it drip off the leaf really well! Photography is honestly such a great thing to learn and a good skill to have! Thanks for your post!
    Noelle

    1. Hi Noelle,
      Thank you for your kind words on my bald eagle photo! Taking photos of the rain was definitely a little time-consuming and frustrating as I had to stand in the rain in order to capture it. I am so glad that I chose to learn photography as now I will always be carrying my camera with me when heading off to a scenic location with the knowledge of how to create a good photo regardless of the weather and lighting. I hope to potentially teach a photography class if the opportunity strikes. Thank you for commenting!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *