Strawberries in Rain
There are many ways of photographing raindrops. Just by changing the shutter speed, you can vary the length of the rain streaks and changing the direction of the light effects the overall mood and the composition. Personally, I found the most pleasing effect was achieved at 1/40th to 1/60th of a second. Anything slower made the streaks appear too long while a faster speed gave short dashes or just frozen rain drops. The bowl of strawberries were placed against a setting sunlight so the berries and the rain drops can be backlit. To remove shadows and add highlights to the front of the strawberries, Canon Speedlight was set at 1/16th power, handheld over my head and remotely triggered. My camera was set on a tripod, manually focused, and set at 1/60 sec at f/18, ISO 1250. The high ISO allowed me to close down the aperture to f/18 and ensure sharpness from front to back of the strawberries, while still blurring out the green shrubs in the background.
In hindsight, I would have made the following changes:
- use a handheld watering can rather than a hose sprayer to get a more natural looking rain
- use a polarizer to cut down on the glare
- use better looking strawberries, or at least position them better. Some of the berries look bruised.
Behind the Scene
Here is my lovely but expensive assistant making rain. The strawberries were placed on top of a Waste Management trash bin to achieve just the right height so the green shrubs come into the background view.
