Rainy Sunset in Southwest Virginia
Mostly a quick post here today. I was sitting in my car at the Buffalo Mountain trail head under really heaving rain and contemplating making the hike up to the top. It's not a long hike, but with loud thunder overhead, I turned back. I headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway, which isn't far away. After driving towards Rocky Knob for a while, I realized that I wasn't going to get out of the storm.
As I was driving towards the parkway, a spot near the Presbyterian Church on Halls Store Road caught my eye. After leaving the parkway, I headed back to this area to wait for sunset. I wasn't really sure what would happen, but I couldn't be happier.
The color started off as subtle and went ballistic. Rain was falling the entire time, which wasn't a problem for the telephoto images as it has a long lens hood. The issue came when I mounted the wide angle. For the life of my I can't find my lens hood for it. I never really used it often but times like now it would really be handy.
I ended up wiping the lens and keeping the lens covered until the 2 second timer was about to end and just hoped that the image would be rain drop free. The image was indeed rain drop free, but wiping the lens right before the shot made the colors 'bleed' a bit into the foreground. This was made more apparent because the rain was causing color everywhere.
I originally shot these using the 'shade' white balance setting. In post, I backed the temp off to somewhere around the 'daylight' setting, which is much cooler. I posted a photo at the bottom using the 'daylight' white balance for comparison. The color really was that intense!
Thanks for looking:)
Here is a photo from earlier this year using nearly the exact same white balance(to emphasize the incredible color of the above images)
