Rain (Cee’s black and white challenge)
Rain
Weather: it’s raining – again
An experiment: Olympus E-PL3 with manual Contax Zeiss Planar 50mm at f/1.4, 1/125 sec. Raw file desaturated and contrast manipulated using ‘curves’, etc in Gimp.
I recently came across Cee’s challenges through a blog I’ve followed for a long time: Mostly monochrome. So, waiting for paint to dry (literally! – a project I’ll be posting about on my other blog), I decided to use my recent change on this blog, from only posting pix on film using classic cameras to some pix using legacy lenses on digital, to experiment.
Very creative, is that your reflection i see in the rain drops?
Hello Mark. Many thanks for the comment and question. What you see in the raindrops is the park which our sitting room windows overlook. The focus on the Planar was set at minimum distance, 0.45metres, so at f/1.4 the park was completely out of focus, just a blur. However, each raindrop acted as a meniscus lens so brought the park more or less into focus, but upside down. So I rotated the pic through 180 degrees. The dark shape you see in the centre is a tall tree about 100 metres away. As I said in the post, I did this quickly during another non-photo project and, handheld, getting the images in focus was difficult; it would have been good to have the camera on a focus slide on a tripod. I’d have to do this to use film, which is what I usually shoot, as it took a lot of shots to get one with the raindrop images more or less in focus.
Thank you for taking the time to explain, it’s a wonderful shot. Have a great day
You’re very welcome Mark. I’ve enjoyed your shots very much.
I’m thrilled you found your way to my blog. I adore your photo of rain. Well done. Thanks so much for contributing.
Great image – the black and white scheme makes the rain drops look metallic, a bit like mercury – very interesting!
Many thanks Chez. I hadn’t thought of the mercury, but you’re right I think. I’ll be waiting for the paint (second coat!) to dry again soon so will visit your blog. Thanks again, it’s always great to get comments.