How to illuminate falling snow and rain

[Stosh]

I'm going to admit up front that the main reason for this post is for landscape lighting, but the concepts are the same for photography, maybe closer to video lighting. But pose this question to landscaping people and I get funny looks. At least people in this hobby are constantly thinking about lighting angles/techniques.

My goal is to illuminate snow and/or rain while it's falling through the air at night. It sounds simple, but if you've ever tried to do it in a photo, it can be quite frustrating.

A single light (like a flash) directly on your camera makes close snowflakes much, much brighter than those at a distance.

Top lighting pointing down can illuminate too much snow already on the ground, therefore reducing or eliminating the desired high contrast of white snow on a dark background.

Bottom lighting shooting up may shine directly into the camera (or your eyes) causing an undesirable effect. I suppose the light could be shielded or directed slightly away from the viewer.

One thought is to do similar to the front flash, but have the light source at a distance. Light shining directly away from your eye theoretically would bounce the most back to your eye.
For macro and portrait work, ring lights do very well for lighting subtle features. I don't know that you can see features on a snowflake or raindrop since we're not looking at one individually so I'm not sure if this type of lighting would be advantageous or not.

At this point I'm leaning more towards the "wall of light" or simulated ring light ideas. The light would have several/many sources and have to be mostly shielded from coming back to the viewer. It would also have to be mostly shielded from hitting the ground and other plane (not plain) objects like walls that might take away from the contrast.

I'd love to hear some ideas or suggestions.

 

[480sparky]

I recall watching a show about how Hollywood replicates falling rain. Most important is to have BIG drops. Much larger than what occurs naturally. Special rigs are used to create the over-size drops.

 

[Robin Usagani]

I think your best bet is to put the flash far away in front of the camera directed toward the camera. But you need to block any light pointing directly to the camera. KInda like this shot I did.

 

[Stosh]

I recall watching a show about how Hollywood replicates falling rain. Most important is to have BIG drops. Much larger than what occurs naturally. Special rigs are used to create the over-size drops.

In my situation I cannot control the precipitation. Do you remember anything on lighting techniques or angles?

 

[Stosh]

I think your best bet is to put the flash far away in front of the camera directed toward the camera. But you need to block any light pointing directly to the camera. KInda like this shot I did.

Robin thanks for that excellent example. I had considered back lighting. The advantage is that the brightest lit drops are farther away from the camera. Since my application is actually landscape lighting, it would be difficult to block the source light from the viewer. Instead of a few inch diameter lens to block, I have a very large viewing area to block - not impossible, but difficult. Thanks again!

 

[Gavjenks]

Well the sort of obvious conclusion I am led to by all of your descriptions of what doesn't work is: "lots of smaller lights"
Enough smaller lights that the casual observer of the photograph will not automatically perceive them as individual lit spheres of droplets.

Imagine a sphere of decreasing density moving away from each light source. Think about your typical scene, and how heavy the precipitation is, and how deeply the lights penetrate. Roughly how many spheres would you need to overlap to hide the "bright/dim/bright/dim" transitions between them visibly? Use that many lights. Distribute them evenly around just outside the shot, or even in the shot hidden behind convenient stuff, and flag them well (i.e., put very opaque things in between the lens and them to prevent flares), then fire away.

For light precipitation and/or few drops, you can get away I imagine with fewer lights, since they will penetrate more deeply before being noticeably reduced in strength (they will always fall off by the square of the distance at a minimum, but I mean above and beyond that). The heavier the occlusion, the more you'd need.



OR FORGET ALL OF THE ABOVE

and just compose your scene in such a way that there are "supposed" to be lights in the scene. Like street lamps or in the above example, a magical umbrella. Then the problem becomes much easier, because you're not trying to make it look evenly illuminated. You're trying to make it look like the spheres that it is. So then you only need as many lights as you want there to appear to be lights in the scene. Simply diffuse them somehow and shoot (if an old timey street lamp, tape your speedlight behind the globe of the lamp. If a magical umbrella, put it inside, etc.)