Usually you want a nice, clear day when you go out taking pictures. In fact most of the time I check the weather channel, satellites, radar, weather bureau forecast and connect to local internet weather stations just before I go to a shoot. If I suspect that the day will be filled with rain I change to the alternate shoot. This weekend the weather was strange in Florida and I ended up selecting the backup sites both days so far. Even with that strategy today’s site B got a little rain.

Today’s site B was Lion Country Safari just west of Palm Beach, Florida. Even though we have lived within an hour of the place for 16 years it’s been 38 years since we visited so we figured plan B was not such a bad thing.

About half way through the park it started raining. It wasn’t that little afternoon shower rain but the big, heavy tropical downpour with a lot of water and wind. Most people flicked on their wipers and drove around the park and headed out the gate. and, even though I’m not fond of these types of downpours it’s a great time to settle back and try some of the really difficult shots that you just can’t get very often. With some patience and some luck I have learned over the years that you can get some pretty spectacular shots in the rain.

After making sure the camera was safely out of the rain and stable I set out to try some new things with the settings just to see if I could make my SX1 do some of the more “artsy” shots that I used to do with my film and DSLR cameras. The SX1 went into manual mode for this experiment.

This Zebra shot is an example of long exposure to streak the raindrops. You can usually pull off this king of shot if it’s scenery but with live creatures moving around they usually streak making them look out of focus. The luck part in this shot is that all the zebras were standing perfectly still so the 1/2 second exposure actually worked and the Zebras are pretty much n focus and the background looks like it’s been textured with the rain.

This photo is textured by natural resources, no touch up.