Shooting in the Rain

Rainy weather might be a deterrent to some photographers, given the bad effects water can have on a camera. But it doesn’t have to be that way as any quick Internet search for “rain photography” will show. Nevertheless, as one who shoots in the Washington, D.C. area, I found inspiration in the book Washington by Night, featuring the lyrical night-time images of Washington D.C taken by Volkmar Wentzel during the 1930s. So I decided to give it a try.


Two nights ago, gambling that NOAA’s website forecast for a light drizzle was correct, I went into Washington with two other photographers to see what we could find at the east end of the Federal Triangle. The image above shows the West Building of the National Gallery of Art taken about 20 minutes after sunset. It shows that a clear sky is not required to get a dramatic twilight blue during the 30-minute period after the sun sets. More importantly, the foreground reflections show the principal reason for venturing out into wet weather at night.


The image immediately above was taken about 25-30 minutes after sunset and it is clear that color of the sky has changed considerably. The pink color of the clouds is caused by the city lights, an effect that can be quite vivid when the clouds are close to the ground. The effect was even more pronounced a few minutes later as shown in the vertical image below of the Old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.



The final image was taken well after sunset, looking eastward on Pennsylvania Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol. The horizontal streaks across the lower part of the image were the result of several cars passing by during a 5-second time exposure. The B and W version of the same image evokes the style of Volkmar Wentzel.
Larger versions of some of these images can be seen at my website at www.photographybykent.com. An excellent resource for the images by Volkmar Wentzel can be found at www.volkmarwentzel.com.