TAOP- Cloudy weather and rain.

Outline: Part 1 involves taking a photograph, in sunshine and in cloudy weather and note the difference in exposure.
Part 2 involves taking three photographs outdoors on an overcast day, that make good use of shadowless light.
Part 3 involves taking a range of photographs in the rain.

Part one of this exercise was taken over two days. Day one was lovely and sunny, day two was dull and overcast, with a few heavy showers which enabled me to also complete part three.

The image on the left is the cloudy shot and the right is the sunny shot. These are the final two images and the cloudy picture is the one I thought wasthe best exposure match to the sunny image.

Above is the range of f-stop changes from -1fstop through to +2/3of an f-stop. The original setting was the fourth one from the left.

I felt the -1/3f-stop image matched the sunny one better. You still get detail and colour coming through in the sky and the buliding colour seemed to match better with out looking too dar or to washed out.

I have used three photographs from my photo library for part two.

This first image was taken in April 2009 on Pendine Sands, west wales. I took this image (again on my camera phone) to capture the cloud detail in the sky and also how the relection of the coloud is seen in the still rockpool.

This second photograph, I took on holiday in Ibiza May 2011 with my Fujifilm finepix compact camera. Most of the days on the holiday were overcast so instead of sunbathing, the camera had a few outings. These were little boatsheds which were underneath the walkway and as soon as I saw them, I had to photograph them. Had the sun been out, most of this would've been in shadow for most of the day from the shadows for the actual boatsheds laying across the floor or even from the people walking above.

This third picture was from the same holiday.  As you can see, there are rows of palm trees all along here and had the sun been shining, a lot of the detail from the anchor may have been lost in shadow.

These three images are beautiful without any shadowing and make good use of this.

Part three. RAIN! Most of us dont like being out inthe rain but I do actually love it. As long as I can get dry and warm when I've had enough. I tried this exercise on a few occasions but didn't quite get the photographs I wanted. Then as luck had it, I just happened to be ready during a heavy shower and jumped out ready to get some pictures. And here they are:



1/800 F5.6 ISO 800 WB Cloudy

I am very happy with this image. I had to drop the exposure by 1 f-stop to actually see the drops of water on the white flower.  




1/400 F5.6 ISO 800 WB Daylight

It took a few attempts to get this image as the focus kept going to the scene outside. I also felt this image works better in black and white, as the colour in the background took away from the rain pattern on the window.




1/500 F5.6 ISO 800 WB Cloudy

I'm not overly impressed with the outcome of this image and had to drop down an f-stop to be able to see the reflection of the umbrella but the reflection and water patterns on the table can be seen well.




1/500 F5.6 ISO 800 WB Cloudy


Drops of water running down the wall. I edited the exposure slightly as the wall is a very bright orange colour and I felt that it took focus from the water drops.




1/500 F5.6 ISO 800 WB Daylight


I like this image too. Again, I dropped the exposure by and f-stop to avoid the top of the image being washed out. I like how the droplets take on the colour of the surface.



1/400 F5.6 ISO 800 WB Daylight

My grass looks really long here but I can assure you it's not. However, If the grass had been any shorter, I dont think this image would've worked so well. Again, I had to lower the f-stop by 1 to capture the drops better. I am very happy with this image.
 

This was taken at a summer festival in June this year. After an afternoon of heavy showers, we were rewarded with this beautiful rainbow, highlighted by the still dark rain clouds behind it.

Conclusion: It just goes to show that some amazing photographs can be taken in any weather conditions. Some of my favourite images produced so far in this course have been taken in rain. As long as you are aware of your camera settings and how to use them, a dreary afternoon can still allow a beautiful photograph to be taken.