POV Rainy Street Photography w/ Teemu & Tips for taking photos in the rain
How to take great street photography in the rain
Shooting in the rain can be tough but can create cool, moody photos. So what’s are the best tips for taking photos in the rain?
Teemu in this video walks the streets of Seoul, Korea with his Fujifilm x100v camera and an umbrella to get some beautiful photos.
He also shares his tips for taking street photography in the rain, such as getting different angles, using water reflections, taking your time, and underexposing the photos.
POV Rainy street photography & tips for photography in the rain
While you are out taking street photography in the rain, you can take advantage of the cloudy lighting and wet conditions to get moody photos.
Here’s some tips for getting the best rainy day street photography. Taking photos of the buildings, people, traffic, and lights.
Tip 1 for photos in the rain – Protecting camera gear from the rain – just use an umbrella
A simple umbrella will protect you from the rain, however there are other budget DIY rain solutions you can try.
Your umbrella will at least do the job protecting the camera and yourself from getting too wet.
You can also try using the umbrella in the foreground of some of the photos to get a cool effect, like this photo Teemu took below:
Taking rainy photos Tip 2 – Take your time, you might have to wait for good photo settings
Take your time walking around the location, taking photos in different types of settings.
Be patient as you may have to wait for instance if you want shots of people walking on the streets or cars passing by and there might be less people out in the rain.
Photos in the Rain Tip 3 – Take lots of photos and using all different angles.
Try many angles for your photos in one location or on one subject. Subjects, light, reflections, and shadows will appear different at another angle, so you may need to keep changing the angle.
Finding the best angle for the photo might take you doing some trial and error of taking lots of photos at different angles.
Take photos at varying heights, or look up or down to get different perspectives.
Tip 4 for Rainy Street Photos – Go to locations you’ve taken photos at before
Go back to street spots you like to take photos at, and take more photos to get more angles and a wide variety of shots.
You’ll be familiar with the setting like what angles work best and where the light is best. And you will be able to have a collection of many shots to use.
Tip 5 – Using the reflections created by the rain
Puddles, raindrops, and rain running down windows are great reflective photos to try. You can try out multiple angles of the deliberations to get a different variety of photos. Teemu takes the below photo of a puddle with the light reflections:
Tip 6 for taking photos in the rain – Look for sources of light and then underexposing the photo
Underexposing the photo (limiting the light your camera captures) when shot towards sources of light gives the dark, moody photo effect like Teemus’.
You can try doing this by adjusting the exposure settings on your camera.
For example the photo below gets a moody vibe from limiting the light both when shooting and also in editing.
Take great rainy photos Tip 7 – Explore odd spaces
Try going down alleyways and seeing what you can find that is interesting. There might be animals sheltering from the rain, or broken umbrellas discarded on the side.
You never know what you could find exploring different or uncommonly photographed spaces.
try your next street photography session taking photos in the rain
You could create some dark, moody photos or cool reflections by walking the streets in the rain with your camera. When you see those clouds roll in and the rain starts to fall, grab your gear and get out there!
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