Summer’s Coming….get the raincoat?

Its April, summer’s here.  Yey!

Paddling in the Lakes, sunbathing in the back garden (if i had one….) and taking our canine counter-parts for elongated walkies in the hope of catching some great sunsets in the warm evening glow.  Yep that was summer for you.

Last summer; freezing my you-know-what’s off on The Isle of Skye, whilst trying to juggle stopping my camera from getting soaked (the plastic bag works every time) and catching a usable shot of Portree in between the breaks of cloud.

Summer, it ain’t what it used to be. 

Looking outside now.  Fair enough, it isn’t dismal.  Sun’s making a watery effort to break through the rain clouds (sorry just had to) and the wind’s not so bad that i can have the window open.  But photographing weather it most certainly is not.

You just can’t seem to catch it these days (and yes i know i sound like your great-great-granddad reminiscing on the ‘old days’ when they still used the cane and didn’t have any of these ‘DV’ player thingies’ ), but it’s true.  And you know it is.  Were all doomed for a list of long cold summer’s filled with nothing but torrential rain and overcast skies. 

So with the recession on us and the crowds flocking to Seathwaite instead of Spain, are we all in for a disappointment?

Well, a quick look at http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=longrange;sess= is likely to swing your mind this way, with the words ‘rainfall totals quite a way above usual seasonal amounts ‘ hitting home hard with the fact that our long hot summers are a thing of the past.

So as photographers the outlook is pretty bleak eh?

Well not necessarily so.  In fact the weather, if utilised correctly, can be one of photographers’ main allies.

Some of the most dramatic and powerful photos of the century have been taken under pretty ‘crap’ weather conditions, but that’s not to say it’s all easy as point and click.

Far from it.

A break in the clouds, the sun shines through and illuminates the landscape played out before your feet, camera ready you snap away only for it to dawn on you that you’ve got the lens cap on (believe me it happens to the best of us).  Hurriedly taking it off you realise in vain that the clouds have reformed and are once again casting their miserable overcast on the terrain. 

B***ocks.

Yep, its happened to every photographer out there and don’t bother to deny it. (Still it’s not as bad as pressing the ‘delete all’ button after a days shooting, which of course i definitely haven’t done)*.

*lie

So how can poor weather be used to our advantage?

Well firstly you’ve got to have your wits about you.  It’s no good not being ready and missing that one minute in the day where you actually have light.  Secondly snapping away as you normally would at ‘beauty scenes’ won’t work, its miserable weather and let’s face it; even Ashness Bridge looks a little less aesthetically pleasing in the rain (where doesn’t).

A technique i prefer is to take what the light illuminates, as opposed to the light itself.  For instance the light is breaking through the clouds to lie on a mountainside.  Instead  of buggering your camera meter by trying to capture this event and having lens flare everywhere (that’s unless you’re rich enough to have a camera  to handle light situations like these, some people are way too lucky), point towards the mountainside, and zoom and crop out the distinctive features.  Perhaps this is a wall, or where bracken meets a grass field, the main thing is that you focus on something distinctive, a subject.

Thirdly if you are going to brave the bad weather, then you are going to be faced with some of the harshest lighting conditions a photographer can face.  Therefore you must know your meter readings.

Usually evaluative metering will be used (for those who don’t know the jargon this is an overall reading of how light the image is), however in difficult lighting this can easily be foiled, and result with washed out colours and over exposed skies.   

So instead i would recommend using Spot Metering.  This takes a reading of how light a specific area is, enabling you to take that ever elusive sun ray, or that momentary light on the side of a mountain, or reflected in a lake.

Well hope that helps.  If you are daring enough to don the waterproofs this summer (let’s face it we’re going to have to at some point) then remember these points and you should be on your way to taking some half decent photos. 

Oh, and one last thing.  Don’t whatever you do leave the lens cap on.

Happy shooting

Rich

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