Things to Photograph When the Weather is Ugly

Many times, nasty weather enables the most striking landscape photos. All you have to do is protect your gear and be sure you yourself aren't threatened by lightning or high winds. That's all! Easily said, but sometimes not easy to do. And what about when it's just a harmless but boring rain, no unusual light to go along with it, and you're almost home already?


When the rain is relentless, the light gives out and there's nothing interesting to see outside, you can always call it a day and make a cup of tea. If you "cheat" and steep leaves that come in a bag, there might even be something worth a photo. I usually drink actual tea, whether green, black or white, but this was a lemon ginger herbal concoction, and I noticed that the colors were surprisingly close to the ceramic counter tile underneath the glass saucer.


Out came two speedlights (flash), one on the left bounced off a white plastic card, and one on the right diffused and flagged (prevented from hitting the camera lens) with a folded paper towel. The cross lighting helped emphasize the textures of herbs, spices, paper, and glass.

I wasn't the only one who chose to hunker down indoors.

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A Midday Walk, Seeking Signs of Spring

Pleasant, sunny spring weather has settled into central North Carolina for awhile. I had the noon hour set aside for a walk with our dog. Although that's not a time of day usually considered ideal for photos, I grabbed my 5D II and 100/2.8L macro lens to hunt for signs of the season along our route. I can never be sure where she'll lead us, or how far she'll want to go (in her old age), but things looked promising.

It turned out that doggie did well today, and we covered a reasonable distance, though it took almost two hours - partly because of her pace, and partly because I stopped at various points to catch some quick photos. I'll let the pictures tell the story of our little journey.

Flowers, budding leaves and color always put a little extra "spring" in my step (cough, cough), even when there is some raggedness in evidence.

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Helleborus orientalis

After the winter that wasn't, the North Carolina Piedmont is experiencing the spring that hesitates. Ten days after the equinox, temperatures continue to fluctuate widely, though we seem to be past the point of hard freezes.

The hellebores (Lenten roses) that bloomed so nicely while we had frost on the ground in February (with no real snow, and room temperature excursions surrounding the cold nights) are continuing to put on a show.

Here's a very close look:

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Winter Scenes, "Fake" and "Real"

I've been feeling unlucky about rarely having an opportunity to do winter photography featuring the leitmotif of the season - snow. Yesterday, while preparing a late night snack, I found that I had accidentally created a sort of simulation of stones on snow and ice. The resemblance is slight, and I only invested a few moments in setting up lighting and shooting the miniature scene, but it was fun.

The technical details would take longer to describe than the "photo shoot", but in a nutshell, I used a single strobe (Canon 600 EX-RT) on a simple plastic support, placed to camera left and about 30º behind the subject. I knew cross lighting would bring out some texture in the "rocks", which were actually tiny cacao nibs. The Greek yogurt substrate doesn't have much texture (sugar would have been better if this had been a planned project), but that's okay. As soon as I had the photo, I grabbed a spoon and ate my simple concoction. It was delicious, and I didn't even get any on the macro lens.

Today I decided to take our Raleigh winter as it is (cool, warm, cold, warm, cool, hot, cold - don't try to plan), and photographed a rogue autumn leaf. The slightly odd character of the transitions from sharp to fuzzy in this photo (i.e., the gradient of blur from left to right rather than just far to near) is explained by my use of a tilt- shift lens. I tilted the optics the opposite direction from what would keep the entire fence in focus, so the plane of sharp focus extends from near the camera on the left (where there is nothing but air at that distance) to far from the camera on the right, passing through the region of the dead leaf along the way. That is what I wanted to emphasize. A telephoto lens with wide aperture could give a very shallow depth of field and isolate a sharp subject, but an ultra wide angle lens that can give the kind of perspective seen here would inherently have a rather deep depth of field, and minimal background blur. A tilt lens enables a lot of control over this, even in a short focal length.

Here's how one can get the entire scene in focus, tilting the lens to the right, aligning the plane of principal focus with the fence, and stopping down to f/11. The aperture was f/4 for the shot above.

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