London Street Photography in the Rain
I’ve always liked the idea of doing street photography in the rain. I often come across some really eye catching photographs on social media of people caught in torrential rain which may not be good fun for them, but can make cracking photographs! The camera I use is a Fujifilm X-T3 which has weather resistant features, however my favourite lens, the 35mm f1.4 does not. I do also own the 50mm f2 which is weather resistant so I will tend to take this out if the weather man is predicting an imminent storm.
So prior to a recent trip into town one evening I checked the forecast which suggested some occasional rain, but also some sun. I decided to take a gamble and took just the 35mm f1.4. I headed over to my usual haunts around Westminster, starting on Whitehall and walking through Trafalgar Square. At this point I could see some very dark clouds looming, I could also feel it in the air, sometimes you just know the rain is coming, I therefore made a quick decision to dive into a Pret a Manger for my favourite coffee of choice at the moment, an oat flat white. Literally after five minutes of sitting down with my coffee, the heavens opened. I was smug with the choice I’d made. Groups of tourists piled inside looking for tables, some found them and just sat there without buying coffee, how rude!
After about an hour I decided I’d had enough of people watching and as the rain seemed to have abated I grabbed my bag and walked outside. I headed across town, but it wasn’t until I walked over the bridge towards Waterloo that I grabbed my camera from my bag to take some shots. The rain had picked up again, but I found some cover by the Royal Festival Hall and took a few warm up shots which were nothing to write home about. I continued further past the Hall and down the steps to where the food market is usually located, I started to find my flow and managed to take the following shots…
I tried to catch the smoke being expelled here, but the yellow box in front of the subject is unfortunate and really spoils the composition - 35mm 1.4/ISO 320/SS 1/320
This shot was a bit of an accident as I tried to focus on the subject, however it could have worked quite well if it wasn’t for the blue car passing in the background - 35mm 1.4/ISO 640/SS 1/320
Again this could have worked quite well, but the subject is slightly out of focus and it’s just not interesting enough - 35mm 1.4/ISO 1000/SS 1/320
This is one of my favourite shots of the night. I’m happy with the silhouette of the subject with the blurred outlines of the drivers in the vehicles behind. The sun was also coming through in the distance which helped - 35mm f1.4/ISO 400/SS 1/320
By this point I managed to find some shelter on York Road, by the main entrance to Waterloo Train Station and opposite the recently opened entrance to Waterloo Underground Station. It was a great place to be as I was completely sheltered while still getting shots of people being drenched by the rain. This is the perfect position to be in when shooting street photography in the rain as if you become too cold and wet then you lose interest very quickly and just want to go home. I was generally shooting with the lens wide open at f1.4 as I was aware of the poor light and wanted to keep the ISO down.
I then spotted this rather dapper gentleman, I had to follow to try and get a better shot. I did like the bokeh on this one though - 35mm f1.4/ISO 320/SS 1/320
After a few misses, this was my favourite one of this gentleman. I like the way he’s holding the paper, almost like a spy going to make a drop - 35mm f1.4/ISO 500/SS 1/320
This is one of the final images I took and I’m happy that I managed to actually capture the rain coming down here - 35mm f1.4/ISO 800/SS 1/320
So after a slow start trying to get motivated in the rain, I’m glad I persevered. Although I was generally happy with the shots I took I was disappointed I didn’t get any shots where you could really see the rain bouncing off the pavements. For this I need to try and get more shots back lit with the sun coming through, but I suppose that would involve a bit of luck too. Oh well, something to work on next time. You can see more images from my London street photography adventures in the gallery here