Sweet Melancholy

Rainy Day Rapture © Harold Davis
Rainy Day Rapture © Harold Davis

There’s nothing like watching rain from inside where it is warm and dry to usher in feelings of sweet melancholy. Yesterday, a warm and gentle rain fell like a curtain of moisture across Berkeley, California.

It was too wet to photograph outdoors, but my shutter finger was definitely itchy.

Looking out a rear window I saw the pattern of waterdrops on the glass made fanciful colors from a neighbor’s yard. I shot with my camera on the tripod, combining three exposures to get the depth-of-field right. I used the f/5.6 exposure for the overall background, and exposures at f/14 and f/32 to render some of the waterdrops sharper.

Exposure data: 50mm macro, 3 exposures (1/60 of a second at f/5.6, 1/13 of a second at f/14, and 3/5 of a second at f/32), ISO 100, tripod mounted; exposures combined using hand-layering in Photoshop.

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