a walk in the rain
Fitting, I suppose given the weather that we’ve been having in the Bay Area this week.
2 years ago I left the apartment earlier than usual for work and spent an hour or so downtown tracking people during their commute, looking for photographic opportunities. Despite getting a little wet, I had a great time and continued my adventure that evening after work. I ended up with a few shots that I liked making this week’s selection a little difficult. I opted for this black & white shot as I like the way the woman seems to be tracking the white line that crosses the frame.
I had set out to try to capture the mood of commuting in the city in the rain – I wanted lots of umbrellas, and blurred motion to signify the movement of the people looking to avoid getting wet. I had planned on converting some of the images to black and white but I ended up with some great colors in some of the shots and left those as shot. But shots like this I felt were indeed better when converted to black and white as I had originally intended.
To achieve this shot, I metered the scene and stopped down the aperture to f/22 in order to maximize the shutter speed. In order to keep the shutter speed from being too slow and in order to introduce some grain to the image, I bumped up the ISO settings to 3200. I had the camera set this way for several shots and would pick a target and start shooting. In this case, I chose the woman with the plastic umbrella and I tracked her across the street as I shot – thus slightly blurring the rest of the scene. In Lightroom I converted the image to black and white. I altered a few settings to bump up the contrast and increase the graininess of the shot.
I have it on my list of projects to go out and shoot some more like this, but I find it hard to motivate to go out in the mornings in this rain if I’m not heading to work.. Ah well, there will be more rain storms. That I know.
