With winter fast approaching, the Pacific coast of British Columbia is generally rainy. The sky is usually overcast, and the clouds loom heavy. The pull to stay inside and out of the damp is strong, but the desire to get outside is still there. Usually there are enough breaks in the weather to get out between the rain, but being prepared is always key.

I have wanted to shoot something in the heavy rain for a while, but even though we get relatively consistent rain throughout the entire Fall, it’s still tricky to plan around this weather. Usually the rain comes and goes throughout the day, and when you’re actually shooting it might not be raining at all so capturing the images you want can prove to be difficult.

Earlier this October, there was an atmospheric river forecasted. This is defined as: atmospheric river (AR) is a narrow corridor or filament of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere. What it essentially means is it’s going to rain extremely hard, and it’s going to rain for a while. I tend to lean into these moments of inclement weather as I feel they can make some of the most dynamic images.

On my morning drive to daycare drop off I was impressed with how hard it was raining. It felt like a wall of water was falling from the sky. While I didn’t originally have a shoot planned I knew these were the conditions I was looking for. As soon as I had the little one dressed up in his rain suit and dropped off, I started making some calls to see who I could line up to be talent for this shoot.

After sending out a bunch of messages I found Josh who was willing to head out and spend a bit of time in the forest getting soaking wet. We made a plan, and met up an hour later. Usually I’m pretty lax about the rain gear I bring as most of my bags are fairly water resistant and a lot of the gear is weather sealed so I don’t think twice about it, but this time with how heavy it was rainy I made sure to pack some extra rain gear.

We hiked into the forest and found the location and got around to setting up the lights and making sure everything wouldn’t get drenched. For my camera I have a custom made cover I sewed out of an old jacket, designed to still give me functionality of the camera. I covered my lights with plastic bags leaving the bottom open to allow ventilation. I wasn’t to concerned if things got a little wet, but at least they weren’t getting soaked.

When there is some sort of atmosphere in the air (rain, fog, snow, dust, etc) my go to lighting is backlight. This illuminates the particulates in the air, and creates a dramatic look, and can highlight how hard it was raining. With the rain and fog in the air the backlight was key for this shoot. Using the Elinchrom THREE with a High Performance reflector, I positioned it behind the scene. The way I work is I get the light roughly positioned and then adjust as necessary once I figure out my exact framing. Using the High Performance reflector creates a hard light and illuminates the falling droplets, but since it has a narrow beam of light, it allows you to control where the light does and doesn’t hit.

I build my lighting set ups starting with one light. This way I can see exactly what each light is doing. For the first few images, I only used the backlight and silhouetted Josh coming down the trail with the fog and rain. I didn’t want the full silhouette for every image though, so I added in a second light.

My second light was an Elinchrom ONE with a 60x80cm Rotalux Rectabox and I used this light to add fill and illuminate his face. The power was fairly low as I didn’t want to overpower the backlight.

With the relatively dark conditions and overcast skies I didn’t need to rely on fast shutter speeds to overpower the ambient light. I shot below the sync speed of my camera, and used the fast durations in Action mode to freeze the motion.

I set my exposure for the ambient light and then darkened it a bit to still keep some detail in the surrounding forest, and adjusted the power on my strobes accordingly to get the look and exposure I wanted.

After about two hours of shooting everything was fully saturated. My pants and jacket were soaked through from laying on the ground, and my backpack had pools of water on it. We had captured the shots I wanted so we made the call to pack up and head back.

I knew I had my work cut out for me in drying out my gear. I made sure to take everything out of my bag, and remove all lens caps, and anything that could be holding any moisture, and pull the internal units of my backpack to make sure everything was fully dry.

Keeping the kit pretty simple for this shoot was key. Working in rain that heavy can be challenging, and by minimizing the gear allowed me to focus on shooting and the creative and not need to be worried about stuff getting wet. Both the THREE and the ONE helped simplify this as I didn’t need to plug in any power packs or heads, and I could easily cover them with bags to keep them dry. I’ve personally used my THREE in pretty heavy rain and snow with no cover and no issues, but I’m not sure what it’s actual weather rating is.

After bringing the photos into Capture One it was a relatively quick process to get them where I wanted. Going into this shoot I had a look and colour palette I was going for so with a few minor edits I arrived at the final product.

In the end the images turned out how I envisioned them, and showcased the heavy rain and the willingness for someone to still want to get out and recreate in these conditions.

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Athlete: Josh Dooley

Gear

• Canon R5 | Canon RF 24-105 F4 | Canon EF 70-200 F4
• Elinchrom THREE
• Elinchrom ONE
• Elinchrom Rotalux Rectabox (60 x 80cm / 24 x 31.5″)
• Elinchrom High Performance Reflector
• Various light stands
• Plastic Bags

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Discussed Items

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