If you’ve been following my blog or my Flickr stream you may have noticed more than the usual proportion of extreme macro shots involving waterdrops. Well, I do love shooting waterdrops in the spring, so maybe this needs no explanation, but it is also because I’m at work on a book about waterdrop photography from Focal Press (the cover is shown to the left).

Here’s the story behind a recent shot I made for my book Photographing Waterdrops: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis.

Up early on a cool, drizzly morning I wandered the trails in the coastal mountain range near where I live. It was damp and cool and my major preoccupation was staying warm and keeping my equipment dry.

Then the sun came out and the moisture began evaporating over huge swaths of the land. I knew that to capture waterdrops I needed to move swiftly. I lay down on my belly in the rain soaked grass, and pointed my camera on its tripod up at these waterdrops with the sun bursting through.

I was careful when I made my exposure to error on the “dark side” by about 1.5 EV—because I knew that I could recover dark areas when I processed the photo, but if let the sunbursts blowout because of overexposure then the primary visual point of the image would be lost.

Exposure data: 200mm macro lens, 36mm extension tube, +4 close-up filter, 3/10 of a second at f/45 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.