Rain

On garden photography in the rain

The rain to the wind said, 'You push and I'll pelt.'

They so smote the garden bed

That the flowers actually knelt

And lay lodged — though not dead

I know how the flowers felt.

Robert Frost

Apparently, the sun is on its way this weekend, but down here in (sunny not sunny) South Devon, we have overcast skies and quite a bit of rain… with brighter skies this morning I ventured out in to the soaking wet garden and took some pictures. Standing accidentally on a wealth of snails, and getting wet feet through my ever-present Crocs, I poked my macro (100mm canon ) lens into the billowing and slightly collapsed borders.

Soft light and sparkly ‘Bokeh’ caused by raindrops really emphasise the details. If you use a short depth of field (say around f5.6 with a lens like this), the bokeh effect is very beautiful and lends a ‘dreamy’ feel to images. Bokeh is the soft, blurred quality of out-of-focus areas in a photograph, creating dreamy backgrounds that make sharp subjects pop.

And the soft light of early morning gives great detail and atmosphere (rather than a harsher midday light when the contrast is much higher). Just twenty minutes, creeping around the garden landed me with twenty very usable images. It really is worth making an effort, even when it feels like the weather is against you. Unfortunately, my mollusc ‘friends’ also had the same idea…