On a recent summer rainy day, I headed northwest for a back-road country drive and stopped at Olishes farm stand where they offer delicious soups, homemade breads, and fresh vegetables. I felt like having some soup; luckily they had chicken noodle…
Back in the car with soup, olive bread, endive, radicchio, and arugula in the bag, I turned the car engine on and “Vivaldi: The Four Seasons” filled the humid space. I looked ahead through the car window and noticed the beautiful display of pink, green, yellow, violet, and raw sienna colors — rows of flower pots asking for abstract interpretation.
Grabbing my camera, I thought of the words of one of my favorite artists, Vasili Kandinsky (a Russian expressionist painter).
“Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, and the soul is the paint with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibrations in the soul.”
Setting the aperture to f/2.8, shutter 1/100, ISO 320, I panned in tandem with the violin experimenting with windshield wipers on, windshield wipers off, as we’ll as different aperture and shutter combinations.
It was a lot of fun and thought I’d share my Rainy Day Recipe:
Rainy Day Recipe:
- Rain
- Car AC: Off, sit five minutes to allow steam to form on windshield (hot summer day helps)
- Windshield wipers: on/off – experiment
- Music: Vivaldi or whatever makes you sway (not too fast)
- Shutter -1/50 or faster
- Aperture – widest available (f/2.8)
- ISO – FYI: when you leave the house, set your ISO to the lowest setting that will enable you to photograph in your particular style. For gray overcast light, I chose an ISO of 320 in case I wanted to photograph a scene with great depth of field.
When post processing, music helps my creative ideas flourish. To create the dreamy abstract, I brought the image into Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 and chose the “blur gallery.” I further enhanced the image using Perfect Photo Suite 8.527. (Tip: click here to preorder the new Perfect Photo Suite 9 and get some freebies).
Consider joining me for one of the four courses I will be teaching at PPSOP: All About Color, Photographing Children:Rising to the Challenge, Painting Photos, and More About Color (November only, All About Color class is a prerequisite). Classes start on Friday, October 3rd.
Have fun and let me know how your rainy day project comes out.
