After the Rain

Do you remember the days as a kid when you would chant the rain away? Do you remember how disappointing it was to sit and stare out the window? I find it funny now how upset I got this evening when the skies opened up and brought torrential rain. I had to wash the car. I had to mow the yard. I wanted to take a walk in the park. But, today the rain brought a little bird. And when the rain stopped, the show began.

I was slumped in the butterfly chair watching season four of "The Sopranos" half awake and half wishing I could sleep through next week. What else is there to do when it rains too hard to even run out and check the mail? I thought I had left these crazy summer storms behind when I moved away from Florida. Certain events have strange ways of bringing back memories of the 4pm rain shower. I recall the smell of steam from the hot asphalt lingering through the window. Or, how about the incessant beeping from the TV when the news decided to inform you about a storm already taking place in your front yard? The lightning had not started threatening and I didn't have much of a reason to stay awake. I convinced myself that it was just a DVD and that if I did fall asleep I could just restart where I left off.

Somewhere around the part where Tony Soprano was having a blowout with his shrink Shanti woke me up. She said, "Hey babe. Come check this out. There's a little bird on our porch." I could hear rolling thunder in the distance. The rain was coming down pretty hard. It didn't take but a blink to run and grab the camera. So there it was - the little bird. It was flopping around on the porch looking for cover and squawking for someone to help. I couldn't tell if it could fly or if it was just scared of the lightning that was now striking everywhere. The rain was too much for it's parents to perform a rescue mission, so it just sat tight in one of Shanti's potted plants until the rain settled down to a drizzle.
I wasn't paying too much attention to the time when I finally felt it was safe to venture outside, but I could already tell we were within an hour of sunset. By now the little bird had fluttered down into the yard somewhere. I guess he was ready to move on.

The light was dynamic. Shanti's simple assortment of plants on the front porch were begging for a closer look. I have always wanted to stage this exact setting: dim lighting, water droplets, and plenty of greenery for eye popping color. I was fairly excited with the conditions present.


I opted to use a Sigma 70-300mm zoom lens with macro capability. The light was dim enough to warrant a tripod. I can't imagine shooting macro without. I also enabled the mirror lockup function to avoid any extraneous vibrations caused by a shutter actuation. I chose to set the camera to ISO 500 and spot metered the brightest features of the subjects. At 300mm, my widest aperture setting was f/5.6 with a max shutter speed of about 1/60th of a second. The last setting I chose, simply to avoid moving the camera, was a 2-second timer delay. This enabled me to depress the shutter and allow the camera to sit steady on the weak legged plastic tripod.

I wish I knew the names or species of the plants, but what more do you need to know other than the fact that they were green? I quickly got into a zone. There was so much color and abundance of water droplets. The leaves varied from bright to dark green. The grass in the distance made for a nice blurry soft background.

There were only a few things I liked about being outside after a rainfall when I was a kid. We used to pull leaves and let them race down the gutter on the street. The winner was decided when a leaf ended up going down the drain at the corner where the roads met. Rainbows - who didn't like discovering those in the sky? Riding bikes meant that we could now fling mud off of our tires proving how big we really were. I never thought walking out onto the front porch after a rainstorm could produce so much photography subject matter. Sometimes I wish I was a kid again. Somewhere around the time I click the "publish" button I will realize that my forty minute adventure on the front porch with the camera will be over. I'll have to turn off the computer, pick out some clothes, and set the alarm. How late I go to bed will dictate how strong my coffee is in the morning.

I sometimes wonder how different life would be if I got to do nothing but take these pictures. Before the rain came I didn't know what I would shoot. I didn't know when I would have a chance to explore some of the photography skills I have spent hours reading about. I didn't know that a perfect moment to create some pictures would come. It's weird how I think back about the song I wanted to sing just before the storm dropped it's load and how glad I am that I didn't. As for the car and the yard - screw it. I'll do it tomorrow or some other day.

I guess there is a lesson that I never realized I learned when I was a kid. Some of the best things in life come after the rain. I'm grown up now. Not much has changed.