#46: Taking photos in the rain

Posted: October 13, 2009 
Filed under: People
Tagged: friends, Fun, photography
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It is always funny when hearing a photographer taking photos in the rain. Why is that? Because we all know how important a camera is to a photographer.  Of course you can say: “You can get a protection for them?”. But what I mean here is that, taking photo IN THE RAIN, which means the camera was barely in the rain. It is not funny, it is crazy! AAh!

Well, honestly, I did not mean to risk my most beloved belongings to such a circumstance. It was a planned field trip to Coney Island, hosted by my photography teacher. He had two classes going together and it seemed like everybody was so excited for this trip. But – unfortunately, when the day came, it was a very very bad day, dark clouds covered all over the sky scrapers, and it started to rain heavily, not to forget to mention the freezing in the middle of summer! But guess what, everybody was there, we gotta go somehow!  Well, perhaps it would be an interesting lesson to learn taking and creating “different” photos in such weather, let’s take that as a special chance!

The day before the trip, I asked Hanh – my beloved wonderful friend and her house mate Tuan to join me with the shooting, since Tuan has a same camera with me and I wanted to have some fun with them. Until I realized the weather turned out to be real bad, I was worried they would not come to join me. For extra information, their place is nearly 3 hours to Coney Island by train!

But they were there! Not just because they wanted to have fun, it was because of me. I learnt the purpose was not taking the photos; it was having fun for me!

We lost connection with the teacher and the class, since I had to go down to the station to pick them up, but there was some train changes during the weekend. The people went ahead and we took a different train.

3 of us sitting next to each other, heads nodded nonstop, we were all cold and sleepy. I heard Hanh and Tuan playing poker for the whole night, they were dead tired. It was dark and raining hard out there, I was sleepy and worried, but having them beside me right at these moments giving me a very warm feeling. “ We will have fun and good photos”. I was thinking to myself!

Over one hour and a half until we got off at Coney Island. Hell it was freezing bad, could not imagine that was on a summer day, and it rained real hard. We got two umbrellas to hide the rain but not enough clothes to hide the cold. Hanh gave me her scarf and Tuan gave her his jacket, so Tuan was freezing with just a T shirt’s on. We started the journey in the rain!

We met my teacher and other classmates there. We separated to do our works. It kept raining! At first everybody hesitated to take some shower, seemed like everyone was about to give up and wanted to go home. But then, it had more fun than we thought. We started to dig out things to capture…not bad…lot of cool wet things to be photographed. I tried to protect my camera as hard as I could from the rain, but then I could not afford one hand holding the 8 pounds camera and an umbrella in another. Hanh tried hard to help us too, left hand was one umbrella for me and another one was for Tuan. But the wind blew her away together with the umbrellas. So I gave up, I let my baby and my body took some shower. Tuan did the same thing to his. We were all wet. But we laughed, danced, ran, fell, we were freezing…we were all so crazy people,  but that meant FUN – I had been in a very hard time back then, but they cleaned away all of these sorrows at least in one day – one bright day – not out in the sky but inside a human’s body!

Until we decided to end the shooting, it was 5PM already and everybody had left. Just us there,  freezing, exhausted, hungry. The cameras and the lens were fully wet. I was thinking to myself, I should be the crazy one,  they should not be – I was the one who had the problems (well, perhaps they did to, hehe). But then I learnt, we called it: “that’s what good friends are for”!

And here are the photos. I was so glad that I had a chance to take those photos! They are really special and different! “ We will have fun and good photos”. I was right!

And….well, despite the extreme wet, my babies were all fine!

My teacher: Harvey Stein – Love his smile

Hey, this is my classmate – he said if he is going to be a famous photographer someday, he would hire me as his assistant! I am waiting!

Another classmate too, it’s Laura, she is pretty talented. You can see how cold and windy it was!

Some protected their cameras this hard. Surprisingly later I learnt that she is not from the classes. So that means someone really intended to take photos in the rain!

And here are…us!

Well, we had some umbrellas on at first….

Anything cool we saw

Freezing to dead…

Started to throw the umbrella away…hehe

Then totally bare – naked….

Wet, dirty, heavy….

Some photos are from mine, some are from Tuan. Tuan has some interesting lens, mostly old and manual ones, but they created extreme cool photos!

It was that cold, but someone still jogging with no shirt’s on. Got this in L iso and slow shutter speed, hand – held!

And some others were freezingly fishing!

I love his expression!

Slow speed!

Experimenting Tuan’s 1.2 macro lens, it is manual. Very thin DOF.

OOOOh, love her love her!

Only crazy people were there at the Coney Island. And they were not in the photos, because they were busy taking photos!

We had lunch here,  and here, a song was played. Right at that moment, it perfectly fitted the mood and the environment. Seems like I was on my way to a very far – cold place….That’s the song up there – click Play!

Taken through the music machine.

Testing the macro lens.

1.2

Water drop reflection. Crop 100%.

We’ve got the fish!!!

Don’t know why Tuan’s photo giving doomed feelings!

And….do you recognize this person?

Finally, best picture of the day, taken by Hanh’s iphone! Taken while we were competing to take photos of the naked man, hehehe!