October  2009. The forecast called for rain, and lots of it, up to 50 millimeters by nightfall. I had signed up for a five-hour birding tour on a sightseeing boat and had no choice but to go, as the trip had already been paid for and it was way too late to cancel. My neighbors, seeing me heading outside into the heavy rain with a photo backpack, joked that I had forgotten my canoe.  I expected that this foul weather would also discourage everyone else. However, when I joined the rest of the group hiding from the rain under an overhang roof at the dock, the mood was completely different: people were energetic and ready to go. The birders (virtually everyone else in the group) were consoling themselves by sharing a comment that the pelagic birds would not fly in heavy rain preferring to stay in water, so the chances of seeing them would be much higher than on a dry day. I suspected that this was going to be a lost day for me, from the photography point of view, but decided to give it a try, braving the elements and staying dry and warm as long as I could.

Soon after the departure, I had to put away my long telephoto lens and switched to a wide-range zoom. There was no chance to get a sharp picture with the long telephoto through this heavy rain. However, I was expecting some opportunities for the seascapes and for the environmental pictures of birds and marine mammals, where the rain would convey the mood of the moment. A wide-range zoom, although by its nature not the sharpest lens design around, had a major advantage: I did not have to change the lenses -- a very unpleasant operation in wet environment. With a rain cover on, I had taken a number of pictures in rain, from birds and sea lions to seascapes. The rain had finally stopped shortly before our trip ended, and I had also managed to get some almost sunny day pictures.

After coming back and reviewing the images on the computer screen, it was clear, as suspected, that all pictures of the birds and the sea lions taken in heavy rain ended up looking grainy and fuzzy. However, I was stricken by the low-key beauty of the picture above, with the lighthouse almost disappearing in the rain and fog, and the trail of our boat adding some dimension and a sense of place. So the day was not lost after all. This photo had more than compensated for all the discomfort and disappointment.

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