Photographs from A Rainy Day on The Beach

Unlike with any other places, the beach is a place where one - a photographer especially - would expect to find the sun and a clear blue sky. Unfortunately, the beach is just part of the earth, and like any other places on it and under the sky, it can also be cloudy and rainy, or even stormy.

So, what would you do if you had come to the beach, all gears packed and ready for the sun, sand, and surf, but found that the place was wet and cloudy?

Here's what I would do:

A photograph taken on the beach during a rainy day (or any day where the sky is overcast for that matter) would produce a near monochromatic image. The soft and even light would even make the picture flat and uninteresting. If this situation discourages you, you might just pack up and go or wait till the weather gets better.

But wait!

The complement of (or cure for?) monochrome is colors. That's it! Colors would break the monotony and the flatness of the situation.

And here's what I did on my recent excursion to a beach with some colleagues when I found that it was rainy and cloudy. I kept walking with my umbrella and camera, snapping whatever I could find interesting photographically all the while scouting for the badly needed colors to make my photographs work.

Then out of nowhere (I was lucky enough here), these girls in bright color clothings carrying bright-colored umbrellas were coming into my view finder. Two were chasing each other playfully. Others were just standing at the edge of the water contemplatively looking at the dark horizon.

"Perfect!" I said. And before I knew it, I had been snapping like crazy trying to follow their moves all the while trying to pay attention to the lines, the perspective, and proportion.







Note: I took all the photographs here with my Canon PowerShot A490 point and shoot digital pocket camera. I only made minor adjustments with a photo editing software for level, contrast, vignetting effects, and resizing.

Rainography

Rainography is obviously a play of words. There is no such a word in the English language. And no dictionaries have had an entry of it yet. I made it up.

Combining the words rain and photography, the new word carries with it the meanings of the constituent words. Its meaning may therefore be construed as photography of the rain. In the study of linguistics, the blending (or combining) of words or morphemes like this is called portmanteau, a word which - etymologically - is derived from the French words "porter" (to carry) and "manteau" (mantle).

Speaking of verbal and morphological blending, let's also remember that a photograph may in itself be considered as a blending of various signs. Hence, it is a text. And like any other texts, it is a locus where a host of other previously existing texts interact with one another in the process of producing this new text (intertextuality). As a text, a photograph can also be read and interpretted.