Lens: Voigtlander nokton 50mm f1.1
Camera: NEX-7, ISO200, f2, 1/400, raw
There are times in which Rome get hit by what seems to be a tropical weather. Super hot in the morning, cloudy at noon, pouring rain in the afternoon, fresh with blue sky in the evening. Like today.
Just to add drama to an already violent rain, strong winds started blowing from every possible direction, making the storm completely unpredictable. Everything got dripping wet, people, cars, roads, trees, and everything that was left on terraces (which, at the end of summer, is a lot of stuff).
Photographing the rain isn’t as easy as it may seems. I don’t feel like an expert at all in the field, actually this shot could easily be the best rain-shot I ever took. From what I learned (from my mistakes), it seems that the shutter speed here plays a crucial role. When I set it too long, then I get a foggy landscape. When I set it too short, then the air seems full of dirty spots. But when I set it right, I can finally “see” the rain in the picture, white drops of water pouring all over the landscape. Fact is, if it’s a windy rain, then the speed of the drops changes with the wind, and the shutter speed has to be continuously tuned, shot after shot.
This winter we had a LOT of snow in Rome, something that didn’t happen since the last thirty years. Now, when I tried to shoot the snowfall, I learned that the rule there is quite opposite. The shutter speed there has to be rather short, or the snow is going to look more like into pouring water in the photograph.
As I said before, I’m all that an expert into rain or snow shooting, we luckily don’t have much of them here in Rome, so if any of you has any better/extra advice, please feel free to share them!