A rainy walk in Northumberland, receiving good news

As we've had thunderstorms and a bit of flooding in London overnight, I thought I'd share a similarly-themed photo from a couple of years ago. Liz and I were on our first drive up to Otterburn together while staying with my family.

It was a sunny day which had led to the trip in the first place and on the way I got a text from one of my brothers, asking me to call him when I could. That sounded worrying and being in an area with next to no phone signal we found somewhere to pull over and call.

Fantastically, it was Christian's way of telling us he'd proposed to Helen and she'd said 'yes'! We were so happy for them and it set us off driving again in an even better mood. We stopped in a couple of spots to take photos and then found what looked like a good spot to stop and go for a walk.

After a few photos near the car, it started to rain a little but not too heavy so we donned raincoats and set off on our walk anyway. Sure enough, the rain got heavier but it wasn't cold and we had our walking boots on so we carried on.

Rainy weather can produce some really great photographs if you can push on through to expose yourself to the wet for a while. The foliage comes to life with more depth and a sheen from the water droplets. Also, everyone else wants to be indoors so you're less likely to have other people in your frame.

Thoughts on the photo

Even with the rain clouds, it was a flash rain shower so there was some quite strong sun trying to peak through and blow out the highlights in the sky and you can see it effectively has blown out some of the clouds in the middle even though a histogram will say they're not.

Normally you'd want to avoid rain droplets on the lens, but in this case I actually quite like it and it helps make the photo for me because it aids that feeling of being out in the rain where the exposure time isn't going to freeze the rain and make it visible in the picture. Maybe it comes from wearing glasses and so having my vision obscured by rain drops is a thing that happens to me even without a camera.

I took a couple of probably more photographically interesting pictures that afternoon (and I'll publish them at some point) but this one does the best job of evoking the memory of walking in the rain for me.