After the Storm: Sunset Captured with Pentacon 50mm f/1.8
It was a rather cold and rainy June Tuesday when we were enjoying our forced COVID-19 vacation chilling in a village and enjoying country life when the summer day skies showed us this dramatic and almost epic battle where the sun was slowly losing its battle with heavy overcast skies until eventually heavy rain ruled it the winner… and then something awesome happened…
We all know (at least those who live in a continental climate) that once in a while, a combination of effects can bring about some truly dramatic light - when after a heavy rain you have that atmospheric cleansing where all the dust and fog go away, plus there are still heavy clouds above you but a gap on the horizon where the sun is setting, you get undercast illumination combined with the golden hour’s dramatic yellow light, plus some areas are still not dried out entirely and you have this barely visible high humidity ‘Glow’ where these tiny, clean water droplets can create a subtle ‘rain spray’ (nimbus effect?) around high-contrast edges… but capturing it is not as simple as it seems, especially with all those full-auto modern cameras flattening images unless they are later post-processed (and amongst all the procedures, this one is one of my two most hated, right along with scanning photo negatives, hehe).
So as soon as the grass dried out, I made a choice - and put my good old beloved Pentacon Prakticar 50mm f/1.8 on the X-E2S. This lens has its “flaws”, but that’s exactly why I decided to use it to try to catch that unique atmosphere right away. And even though the camera did not capture it all, yet it worked for me - I still get that eerie feeling when looking at those photos and almost feeling that post-storm breeze on my face…
I’d say this second photo is my favourite from the whole set - at the time it was taken I still had no idea what this fencing was in the middle of the field besides the other private houses and yards, and only after a while I figured out that this was a tiny piece of land bought by Syrian refugees who later put a tiny container-type house for their whole family… which seemed so odd at that time because all the wars felt to be so far away and we had not even the slightest idea what major life changes were waiting for us in our future or that one day we ourselves would become refugees who would flee from a war zone. But at the time the photos were taken, it was a simple quiet life.
And, of course, we would not be us if our whole family did not go out to observe this miracle of nature. Fun is always even more fun if you have your family to enjoy everything together with you.
