Agaves in the rain #3
Apr, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this picture nearby my old home in Mountain View, California. It was April, and it had just rained. Its fairly rare for it to rain in April in Mountain View, so I took my camera and went for a walk to see how the weather had change the scenery.Time
It was right around 12pm. It had just stopped raining 5 minutes before, the plants were still wet with rain, and there was still humidity in the air. Both two rare events for sunny California.Lighting
It was windy, the clouds were moving fast. I had to wait for the right clouds to move to get that veiled light that you can see on the lower portion of the leaves. Because of the cloudy weather, I was able to shoot midday, and still get good tones out of the picture.Equipment
This was shot on a Canon 6D with at EF 18-40mm F4/0L USM lens at 26mm, 1/400 sec at f 4.0. Handheld, no flash.Inspiration
I love the B&W of Jacob Aue Sobol. I tried to replicate his tone, but with a very different subject. The picture itself is part of a collection of shots to plants that I'm currently working on. I wanted to recreate some of the semi abstract work of lines that Edward Weston had, which I'm very much inspired by.Editing
I touched the tones of the pictures, darkening the blacks which causes the background to disappear and be uniform and boosted the highlights. Then, I increased the sharpness to make the rain drops stand out. I also reduced the contrast, because I wanted to maintain fluidity in the elements.In my camera bag
I normally have a couple filters, and a prime lens. I try to restrict myself to one lens at the time, I rarely carry more than one, unless I'm going on a climbing expedition or mountaineering. If I'm just walking around the street, I try to be as light, and to make the picture taking process as easy as possible.Feedback
Take lots of pictures and have fun doing it! I think the best advice that I read was by Bruce Barnbaum in "The Art of Photography", which went something like: Think before actually taking a picture, and don't just snapshot something because its pretty.
