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…

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.

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