Photographing gardens and flowers in the rain

Misty conditions in The Garden House Quarry Garden in pouring rain

There's a local saying (or possibly I made it up) that describes Dartmoor and its environs.  "If you can see the hills it's going to rain.  If you can't it's raining."  West Devon gets a lot of rain.  Prevailing westerlies bring it in from the Atlantic on a regular basis, sometimes for days or even weeks on end.  Which means that I frequently have to photograph flowers and gardens in the rain if I'm to get the regular weekly shots I need for social media posts for The Garden House.  

Equipment isn't the problem.  My Olympus/OM systems garden gear is weatherproofed and I have no qualms in using it in even pouring rain.  Just take plenty of dry lens cloths to keep the front of the lens clear..

The problem is the quality and quantity of the rain.  Heavy rain is generally a no go.  The light is dreary, vegetation is flattened, flowers bend under the weight of raindrops and, of course, it's physically unpleasant for the poor photographer.  Yes it's possible to get shots - the Quarry Garden image above is an example - but it's not one I enjoyed taking.

Better is lighter rain, particularly when imparting a misty background to more distant parts of the image.

Misty background in a view across the lake

Best of all is light, misty rain (mizzle down here in Devon).  The light is soft, saturating colours, while the fine droplets of rain don't weigh down flowers and vegetation but apply a sparkling sheen to everything while still giving a misty background.

Misty rain in The Acer Glade

Similar considerations apply to flower portraits.  It is possible to get good shots in heavy rain, as illustrated by this shot of Sagittaria and Aponogetum in a lake.

But that was special case.  Aquatics aren't really bothered by rain.

More likely is that during and even after heavy rain the outlines of flowers will blur, especially ones with more complex floral structures.  Though it can look good on foliage, as with this Begonia 'Red Robin', out for its summer holiday.

It's certainly possible to shake the excess water off the flower(s) - but is it worth it when the raindrops produce an attractive patterning to the image.  The only problem with shots like these is specular highlights on the drops.  These can be dodged out in post if they cause a problem but it does add an extra step to the processing workflow.

Galanthus 'Das Gelb von Ei'

Shaking off the excess water isn't always possible.  I'd been eyeing up this more distant snowdrop shot while the rain was falling but it was inaccessible.  I had to return later after the rain had stopped and a breeze had removed the excess moisture before I could take it.  There are still enough drops on the petals to make it an effective rain shot but not enough to bow the snowdrop heads or blur the flower features.

Best of all is when conditions are just right, with soft, misty rain that allows micro droplets to gather on the surface of petals...

Moraea alticola

...rim the edge of a bloom...

Stewartia sinensis

...or coat the protruding stamens of this white Azalea.

In the rain photography of plants and gardens has its discomforts.  We've all known the dubious pleasure of rain running down the back of our neck.  But to get shots that stand out a little suffering is worthwhile.  Isn't it?

My garden photography gear and how I use it

It should be pretty obvious that I'm primarily a plant and garden photographer.  I'm also currently 75, reasonably fit for my age, but without the strength and energy of even 10 years ago.  Three to four hours intensive walking and photography in a garden is about my limit and I can't carry a lot of weight.  So I have to be selective in what I use to get the quality shots I need without exhaustion kicking in.

Which has led me to my current Olympus/OM system garden photography line-up.

I use two bodies - not just for redundancy / just in case reasons but to allow me to switch body lens combinations quickly without having to field swap lenses.  The two bodies are the older OM-D EM-1 MkII and the newer OM Systems OM-1, both bought used from MPB.  Both bodies are set up with the focus bracketing I've described in an earlier post, the better stabilised OM-1 with a 5 shot bracket and the EM1 MkII with a three shot bracket.  Both bodies produce excellent 20Mpx RAW files and readily generate publication quality images.  Why two older bodies?  Budget limitations - and they still do the job.  Each body has spare batteries though with my working day limitations I rarely need them for both cameras.

The three lenses I take with me are the :

• OM Systems 8-25mm f4 PRO.  This is my wide angle to normal lens for garden scenes, allowing me to rapidly frame a shot both where space is limited or the vista needs a wide angles approach.  I actually bought this one new during an Amazon sale and it's served me very well in the two years I've owned it.  

8mm

12mm

21mm

25mm

I usually use this lens on the EM1 MkII and, in many cases, with manual focus on (the manual focus clutch is a wonderful thing!).  Why manual focus?  Because with the focus peaking set on I can far more accurately judge whether all the scene is going to be in focus.  And if it's not - well that's where the focus bracketing comes in.  With a wide angle zoom depth of field is large but even then it sometimes needs to be augmented.

• Olympus 60mm f2.8 macro.  Life size reproduction in a tiny, lightweight body with image quality to match my two PRO lenses.  For small flowers, fine detail and, of course insects.

Of course, even with the IBIS of my two bodies close up and macro work needs extra stabilisation, particularly for ground level work like the snowdrops above.  While I carry a full size tripod in the car I often find I can manage with a little Gorilla pod tripod.  It's very versatile and doesn't get in peoples way.

• 40-150mm f2.8 PRO.  My most versatile lens for its ability to isolate subjects against backgrounds, pick out plants at the back of borders or flowers on trees as well as as allowing me to take compressed field of view garden scenes.  Add in the 1.4x teleconverter and I have an effective 420mm close focusing reach.

   

Geranium x oxonianum f. thurstoniana

Tulip tree flowers high in the branches

Snoe

Do I miss the gap between 25 and 40mm?  No.  If it saves me weight it's a very minor limitation requiring only a step back or forward.  Plus I carry a 72mm filter thread circular polarising filter which fits both the 8-25mm and 40-150mm lenses.  One less thing to carry.

I very rarely need more than this.  It all fits in a single, not very large camera bag and comes in at a little over 4kg.  Manageable for me.  And even then I usually distribute the weight a little more easily by taking a separate camera bag with the OM-1 + 40-150mm and teleconverter in one bag, the rest in the other bag, slung on opposite sides of my ageing body.

Yes, I could carry less - but I couldn't get the results that sell my images to books, magazines and papers worldwide.

In which I encounter a Privet hawk-moth

I had my moth trap out overnight yesterday.  Not the best conditions, a bit cool, blustery and, judging by the ground, some overnight rain.  Needless to say I ended up with only two moths in the trap, a Shuttle-shaped Dart, and a Heart and Dart.

Shuttle-shaped Dart

Heart and Dart

Neither spectacular and two I'd photographed before.  Another early morning with minimal results.  There's been a few of those recently as the weather's been a tad unkind.

Then yesterday evening I went out to water the plants and sitting on my hosepipe was a Privet Hawk-moth, Sphinx ligustri, a relatively common hawk-moth but one I'd never seen or photographed before.  Watering could wait.

Out came my normal moth photography kit of OM-1, Olympus 60mm macro, and STF-8 twin flash, set to Manual exposure, 1/250 sec, and f8.  The moth was very amenable to being moved around and posed (I use a feather to avoid any chance of accidental damage) and I got a few decent shots with the usual limitations of not quite enough depth of field.

Sphinx ligustri

But the evening sun was shining so I decided to try some hand held focus stacking while I still had an amenable subject.  The intention was to get some shots from different angles and still have most of the subject in focus.  The soft evening light brought out the colour of this beautiful moth and, with the greater light intensity, allowed me to use the twin flash for fill in without the usual problem of not enough power to sustain continuous flashes in a focus stack.  

I think it worked.

The moth was then released unharmed into the shelter of one of my palm trees