Rain on a summer day. Especially after a long period of heat, the rain usually brings happiness to us and our environment. I don’t remember this being a particularly hot summer, but I do remember the joy of being out on the long pier, not far from where I live, when this particular rain begun.
The water is not deep in these waters, you could easily walk out some 500 metres before you have to swim to get forward. Walking on the pier, you notice the shifts in colours caused by the sand that is being partly covered by sea grass. That alone is enough to catch my interest, and to start looking for interesting patterns. The contrast between the deep, almost black, green stands beautifully against the light green areas where there is sand. Especially in sunshine. This very day, it started to rain, very gently while the sun was still shining – you know, the kind of rain when you turn your face towards it to really feel it to your skin, a rain that makes you happy.
I made a few photographs on the water to try to catch how the rain drops fell into the water. This one made me most happy, because you can tell how gentle the rain drops are by the rings they cause on the surface. The exposure time helped providing some motion blur to the falling rain drops, but that was plain luck. The compact camera I used must have been set on auto, I can’t imagine how to come up with that exposure time and aperture, otherwise.
Exif data, which not reveals other than dry facts and fills in the blanks:
July 29, 2005
1/89 s
f/4.9
ISO 100
Konica KD 400Z at 24 mm (35 mm eqv: 116 mm)
9 Comments
Nature does give us the best abstracts don’t you think? Well executed Ove. I specially like the dark half against the lighter half. Very Yin Yang
I like the way you can still see the expanding and fading waves from older raindrop impacts. It’s like you’ve recorded a demension of time as well. Also, great green colors.
Dang! Cedric beat me to it!!! I was going to say Yin/Yang.
A very beautiful picture, Ove. Very peaceful. You can almost hear the raindrops.
Cedric, you might be right that nothing beats abstracts from the nature. I believe they embody more soul than for instance an abstract of a man made object. You resonate much easier with the nature. I didn’t want to mention the yin yang perspective on this, even though I recognised this from the beginning, I didn’t intentionally composed the picture this way.
I didn’t think of the time dimension either, as you, Earl, saw in the picture. This was interesting, because it actually adds that certain dimension to the image, fleeting time. Maybe this is what makes it look as peaceful as I agree with you Paul it does. Yin yang, or not, the balance of the elements are key.
You certainly start me thinking in other directions by providing thoughts like this. Thanks!
Wow, I absolutely love this image. Wonderful.
This one’s just transcendent – a beautiful study of color and pattern.
Thanks, Karen! Transcendent, or parted as yin/yang; it’s interesting how different thoughts come to our mind when viewing abstract pictures like this.
What a wonderful picture. I don’t think it’s just the fact that we need rain that causes this photograph to produce such strong feelings for me. The repetition with subtle differences in the “foreground” combined with the the clear and bold separation in the two parts of the “background” turn this into a powerful graphic. That along with the sense of abundance in the rain is deeply touching to me. So simple, yet so effective.
Anita, it makes me really happy that you experience the image this way, really, really happy.