Rain Rain Come Again, Little Johny Wants to Shoot

Rain—a word that reminds all photographers about dehumidifier chambers, dessiccants and that familiar creepy mark on their lenses. But for many Mumbai photographers like me, it is very refreshing thinking about the monsoons, notwithstanding the memories of that terrible flood in 2005. For most of them, it’s a long wait for his dear images.

The long wait for some clouds

A photographer at the busiest place in India, who likes to shoot nature, buildings and cloudscapes, is like a hornbill, waiting for the rain. No, not because it’s too hot over here. But the rain washes away all the dirt from his subjects—trees, buildings and the like—and helps the dust in the atmosphere to settle down, clearing the haze and smog. A bit of sunlight in the intermission can bring up the bright blue backdrop of the sky with white, cottonball-likeclouds floating here and there. Beautiful cloud patterns, brilliant glass windows reflecting those clouds, fresh green vegetation…

I wish there were some clouds on the glass

But till the first drop of rain comes in, most of Mumbai is covered with dust and other pollutants. The sky, most of the time, has an uninteresting hue of gray, which gets mirrorred on water bodies and glass windows too. Shooting building and trees are not options at all since all that we can spot easily are covered with dust.

Wish we had something like a ‘dust filter’ that could be screwed onto the lens like an UV filter.

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~ by Sujith Gopinath on January 31, 2009.