Taking Pictures of the Rain

It's easy to take a rain landscape. If it is raining outside, open a window or door and stick your camera out. A landscape can be anything from standing on a hill and taking a picture of the rain falling down in the next county, or the rain falling down on buildings down the street.

To vary your landscape picture you could focus on the buildings or other objects with the clouds above them, or focus more on the raining hitting said buildings or objects. If you are able to take a picture of it raining away from you, try and get the streaking the rain makes as it falls to the ground or the fogginess that hides objects from sight. Another cool picture would be of standing overlooking some sort of body of water. A lake, a river, the ocean; anything large body of water looks really cool when taking a picture and getting the rain falling into it.

A landscape normally requires you to be outside in order to get the best angle or advantage point, so be sure that you keep your camera protected. Oh, and a hat for you might be a good idea as well.

Taking a picture of raining hitting an object can be quite wide ranging. You could take a picture of your car getting pelted with rain, or your patio furniture dripping; perhaps your gutters spewing rain water down or some plants being hit by rain. Anything is up for grabs.

I prefer to choose one random object that is close to one of my windows and just stand there taking pictures. Every minute changes the picture and you can get some good shots by just continuously taking pictures. I like to choose the buckets that we have under our gutters because catching the splashing as water hits water creates some cool action shots. Other times I like to do the same thing with puddles as they form outside.

Every object has a different reaction when rain hits it: some will just stand still and the picture can highlight the water running off of it; others will move from the force of the water, creating some nice movement to photograph. Whatever you have outside can be an object of beauty when you snap some pictures of it.

Close-ups of raindrops can create stunning photography. Once the rain stops, heading outside with your camera can lead to some nice close-ups of raindrops on furniture, plants or on the ground waiting to be absorbed.

I like to use a technique of, while it is still raining, taking pictures of things outside my closed windows. As the raindrops fall or stay still, they make the objects behind them blurry, which creates beautiful colors and shapes.

Many people prefer to just take regular close-ups of raindrops sitting still, and those make beautiful photographs. Raindrops look good both in large collections, or just a single drop on a leaf. You can really get creative here and come out with some great photographs.