05-22-13 May Showers

I went out in the cold rain the other day and took about 50 photos, mostly of crabapple tree blooms ready to burst. But in my back yard I was struck by the wet aspen leaves stuck together and backlit by the sky. This is one of the last photos I took but it's the one I ended up liking most.

I offer both a color version and a black and white version. Take your pick between the "reality" of green tree leaves or the texture, lines and light that make up the "bones" of the photo.

Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/7.1 ISO200 168mm

05-06-12 Warped Reality

If this is too abstract, I'll tell you what you are seeing. These are water drops on the window that I look through when I am sitting at my computer. It was raining on Saturday and I was captivated by the look of the rain. I took several photos that focused on the rain drops but this photo is focused on the lens effect of the water drops.And, through the lens of the rain drops, you can see the mesh of the screen on the window and the grass and trees in our back yard. But it is all upside down because that's what lenses do. In fact, the lens of our eye turns the world upside down and then our brain turns it right side up again. The human body is a weird machine.Click here to see another version of the same subject with a different point of focus.

01-23-12 Squall Line

I was out on the water and hoping the rain wouldn't come my way. It didn't.

A Rainy Night In London

It had rained lightly all day on our last full day in London. We had enjoyed a pint at the local pub and were heading back to our hotel. I began taking photos of the traffic that was passing and got lucky when a double decker bus came by. Rain and red double decker buses both seem like London icons to me.

Mercurial

I was disgustedly looking out our dining room windows, wondering if the cold rain would end any time soon. But then I saw the silver lining - wind-driven rain had covered the window in beads of water of random size and shape.I like how each drop reflects the color of the greenery in our back yard and how the bright silver of the beads makes them look droplets of mercury. You've never seen drops of mercury? In the 60's it was part of our middle school science curriculum to get to play with mercury! The teacher came around with a heavy bottle of silver liquid and poured globs onto our tables. It was liquid metal.And when the teacher wasn't looking, we took silver dimes and coated them. They stayed slippery for days as the mercury evaporated. Do I have mental problems and other infirmities because I played with what I now know was a highly poisonous material? No doubt.Canoon 5DII 1/60s f/4.0 ISO800 100mm

03-24-09 Tokyo Street Scene

There are so many lines and geometric shapes in this photo and perhaps too many places for the eye to look. But the main point is intended to be the dark figure closest to the camera. He seems solitary but that's a bit of an irony because the night we were in Tokyo every place we went was crowded with throngs of umbrella carrying people. This pedestrian walkway was the sole exception - at least at the moment I took this photo.

Did I work hard to get this picture? Did I have to wait for just the right moment? Nope. In fact this is really more of a snap shot. I was with a group of 4 other people and because it was raining, we were on the move and the rest of the group wasn't likely to be real patient with my attempt to capture the right moment.

Canon 1DII f/5.6 1/80 Canon 24-70mm 2.8L 40mm ISO 800

02-23-09 Rain Drenched Leaves - Hawaii

We were visiting our son Jon, who lives in Kona, Hawaii, in March, 2008, and ended up driving to the famous Painted Church, which is about 30 minutes from Kona. Though Kona is on the sunny side of the island, it had just rained, which was fine, because the overcast skies created a very soft light and the rain left all of the vegetation sprinkled with water. This is a very simple photo: the green stripes, the random arrangement of the leaves and the rain drops create the interest. I shoot a lot of vegetation and find that dark green is especially hard to shoot because in trying to expose the dark part of the photo, the highlights are easily blown out. Maybe this photo appeals to me right now because as I look out my window, I see snow.

Canon 5D, 24-105 4.0, f7.1, 1/125, 400 iso