Rain, Rain, Can You Stay?
A view of an anonymous figure walking in front of a streetcar taken at King and Bay Streets in Downtown Toronto.
Lightning strikes once again.
January 1st, 2021. My eyes were glued to the myriad volume of raindrops feverishly running down the windshield while situated in our parked vehicle, like tears rolling down a child’s pudgy cheeks from the stingingly poignant scent of raw onions being chopped up. We stepped outside the vehicle, stood upright, and looked both ways. Utter and complete desolation, reminiscent of a ghost town. Not a single soul drifted across my cramped vision. I thought to myself, what an astounding moment in time this is.
We (my friend and I) waltzed down to the intersection of King and Bay streets. At this point, the clock had struck 8:40pm. Eight hours since we had been on the road. I had been to this spot on a handful of occasions with each instance producing a series of visually ground-breaking and magnificently dazzling captures. Could lightning strike once again, I questioned. It was time to find out.
Traffic gradually commenced for a few minutes and then solemnly became imperceptible. Inconsistency reigned supreme however, it was not eminently overwhelming. As I propped up my camera and manually adjusted the settings to a presumably preferable middle ground (nothing too extravagant), I spotted a streetcar a couple lights back heading eastbound on King towards Bay, right where we were positioned.
It was a red light for the streetcar. The lights at King and Bay were green. The luminated walk sign had transitioned to a hand signal with a 15 second countdown. The streetcar stepped into motion as the remaining streetlights, prior to King and Bay, had turned green. With less than 10 diminutive seconds left before the east and westbound lights at King and Bay turned red, the streetcar had begun to gradually decelerate nearly 30 meters before approaching the intersection. It is not going to make it, I thought. Now is our chance.
In meticulously nit-picking fashion, I centered my friend in between the streetcar headlights and had him imitate a fixed walking pose to illustrate an impromptu and candid visual effect. We gave a thumbs up to the driver, who rather exuberantly began to mimic very comical and theatrical-like poses while situated in her seat (although she was not distinguishable in the photo). There were 10 seconds remaining on the countdown before the east and westbound light signals were about to turn green.
I turned my camera on, switched to the LCD screen monitor for a clearer view, and mere milliseconds prior to me hitting the shutter button, that is when I noticed it. A mob of impeding raindrops submerging my lens into a basin of infinite dankness and obscurity. The rain tarnished the clarity of my visual preview to the extent that there was seemingly no way I could have rationally made the decision to take a snap, even if I yearned to. You have got to be f****** kidding me right now, I thought as we sauntered off the road and onto the sidewalk.
I was constantly wiping down the lens of my camera every 30 seconds however, the noxious dyad of rapidly rambunctious rain and heartlessly howling winds made my camera susceptible to unadulterated environmental assault. And yes, I know what you are thinking. Dude, why didn’t you have some sort of rain cover or waterproof bag wrapped around your camera? You could have seriously damaged it. I know I know, rookie mistake, I should have known better.
Nonetheless, after more failed attempts, we began biding our time for nearly an hour in hopes that the clouds would stop chopping up raw onions. My lens cloth had consumed all the rainwater from my camera lens thus, being futile as an arid cleaning cloth however, admissible if one chose to utilize it as a remedy for mild (or in my case, excruciating) headaches by placing it on their forehead.
Eventually, the rain gradually started to abscond and my lens cloth was restored to its initial moisture-less form. Lightening did indeed, ever so graciously, strike on this night and spawned the birth of this mesmeric masterpiece. A valiant victory was achieved at the expense of a substantially principled lesson.
I would have preferred the raindrops not to have graced their presence upon my being nor my expensive camera equipment however, without embracing these stringent and unruly weather conditions, this priceless visual gem would cease to exist within my possession. In this case, expecting rain not to fall on you while simultaneously expecting rain to fall so that you can capture its ambiance in a photograph, is precisely antithetical.
Sometimes one must confront that which they willfully choose to bypass in order to grasp that which they truly covet. Sometimes one must march through the ferociously unforgiving inferno to arrive at the refreshing and regenerative body of life preserving water. Sometimes photographers named “Harneak Burmi” should remember to bring a waterproof cover for their cameras so that the march through the fiery inferno produces as minimal of an amount of third degree burns as possible. Just something to think about.
