PHOTOGRAPHING RAIN AGAINST THE SEA

An effort to capture some images to accompany a story I was writing on the local prawn white spot disease epidemic ended in me crouched on the banks of a housing development in the pouring rain, with an old spotty umbrella haphazardly held between my knees as I tried to capture the unworldly beauty of the pouring rain against the sea.

It had been miserable the entire day - the sky waxed and waned and couldn't decide if it was going to rain or not until my final pitstop: A Calypso Bay proposed property development, where an Irish pub perched somewhat randomly up against the choppy waters of Southern Moreton Bay. Despite the empty rows of undeveloped housing lots, the pub was fairly full - I pulled my car into the carpark, hung my camera around my neck, and ventured over to the estuary, where I hoped to get some basic scene-setting shots.

I took a few snaps, finding nothing particularly eye-grabbing. Some close ups of rocks; some generic estuary shots of the river sloshing out into the open waters of the bay. I'm about to head back when it starts to rain, but by rain, I mean really rain. I've almost never seen rain like this before. It was as if the sky decided to dump an entire month's worth of rain in a single second. Out of nowhere, the sky opens up, and I hunch over my camera in an effort to protect it as I hurriedly snap out my umbrella.

I don't even think about photos until I stand up and stop short at the sight of the water. It was almost the same colour as the sky - a pale, stormy grey, its surface unrecognisable. Peppered with the thick downpour, the water leapt up to meet the rain, creating a beautiful wash of colour and pattern.

In the distance, two men in a tinny speed past, hands and arms raised above capped heads lowered against the onslaught, raincoats fluttering around them like a skin. They are small, perfect disruption to the symmetric meeting of the sky and water.

I'm hunched over, desperately trying to snap pictures in case the rain begins to ease up. It's like nothing I've ever seen before - total, natural chaos. Heaven and earth blended in some kind of turbulent purgatory. In mere seconds, the world looks totally different - this picture featured below is of the same red post as in the first image, and yet the scenery is unrecognisable.

After I got what I needed, I struggled back to the car, my sneakers squelching as the water-heavy ground sucks onto them. I was fully wet - my hair hung limply down my back, my feet and legs soaked, but my camera was mostly okay. In the car, I whacked the heating on and wiped any rain from the camera's outside. Inside, it was alright. The photos have turned out beautifully.

It's times like these that have taught me to appreciate the photographic beauty of moments you stumble across.

Most of my favourite photos are not ones I have planned to take at all, but products of a huh, that might look cool moment of creativity.

So experiment! The lesson of this story is take your camera places and just start taking photos. Play around with colour and light and texture, and eventually, something will stick.