Day 179—Self Portrait. . .In a Rain Drop

It’s raining again today; not just sprinkles but hard rain and thunder. By late afternoon I still had not taken a single photo and I thought I’d try water drops again because the water was pouring off the roof giving me a steady source. I set up the tripod in the front doorway and focused my 70-300mm lens at the drops; all my efforts were either out of focus or too dark. I switched to my remote trigger thinking I was shaking the camera on the tripod. Still bad photos. Then I got a brilliant idea to use fill flash. Brilliant except that the built-in flash on my camera syncs at 1/200 and will not allow the faster shutter speeds needed to stop water drops. Note to self: look into external flash units. I then thought I’d shine a bright light onto the drops but couldn’t find a good light source until I hit upon the idea of using the 300 watt work light over the workbench in the garage. That didn’t work either because it’s permanently affixed and wouldn’t reach the drops. But, because I was now in the garage, I noticed another drip from the edge of the garage roof that allowed me to set up the camera with lots of natural back light. I bumped up the ISO and matched that high ISO with an even higher shutter speed and stopped down the lens to f/8. None of the photos I took was spectacular but in one I realized that the black reflection in the drops was me. This has to be it for today. I need to go make a pot of soup to have for dinner on this dreary day.