Rain Pics
My Village in the Rain
Although I selected a waterproof camera with the primary goal of hurling myself into the pond to take pics of passing dragon boats while swimming in the pond, I found another use for it. I’ve developed a whole new way to make my fellow villagers wonder just how crazy I am. 
I go outside during storms and wander around the village taking rain pics. 
It started one day when we were heading back from town during a heavy rainstorm. Instead of stopping and taking the pedestrian bridge, my lovely wife decided to ask the taxi to go down the road a little farther and turn around. This would let us get much closer to the house. Considering we had only one umbrella and it was raining hard, this seemed like a good idea. Just as we reached the second pedestrian bridge, there was a traffic jam. That umbrella wasn’t going to work for both of us in the downpour, so I handed her my cell phone and she got exclusive use of the umbrella. I headed back the way we came to get photos of the pedestrian tunnels and to wander around the village with my camera. So began my new hobby of taking rain pics.
Once I got as far as the village market, I could see that there was quite a bit of water above the second pedestrian tunnel.
Plenty of water above the 2nd pedestrian tunne
This resulted in a small waterfall. Amazingly, the tunnel wasn’t flooding (yet).
Waterfall into the 2nd tunnel? I’m sure it’s perfectly normal 😀
I continued on to the 1st pedestrian tunnel to see how the water situation was there.
A fellow villager heading down the 1st tunnel
Water flowing in was one thing. Water coming through the walls was a bit more worrisome. Even so, there was still more water above each tunnel than inside each tunnel.
Water gushing through the wall of the 1st tunnel? I’m sure it’s perfectly normal 🙂
Inside the village, at least some of the people had umbrellas, unlike me. 
She was smart enough to have an umbrella, unlike me. 🙂
The problem with taking rain pics is that the rain has a bad habit of ending before I’m done taking photos. 
Most of that first storm fell while I was still in the taxi. I wandered around the back side of the village pond to take pictures of some of the mango trees and to check on the sleeping dragons.
Mangos after the storm passed
Lucky for me the summer provided some more downpours. I really like how this banyan tree looks, and heavy rainfall gives a whole new perspective on it.
One of the ancient banyan trees in the rain
A heavy rainfall can drastically alter how otherwise common things look. A simple pathway or a set of stairs can be converted into something far more interesting.
Waterfall on stairs to the village pond
Rapids on the sidewalk
Waterfall on a village walkway
Water flowing down the path to the village pond
There’s an artist who has a studio in several connected ancient houses near the pond. Beneath the overhead walkways, there are some sort of hanging plant roots.
Rain pics of hanging roots
As I was taking pics of these, a woman came around the corner and we almost ran into each other. She had an umbrella. Despite the fact that I was completely soaked at this point (and the rain was letting up), she was trying to insist on putting me beneath the umbrella. My very limited Mandarin and her preference for using local Cantonese weren’t helping communication (and the umbrella was blocking my shots). Happily, a couple of younger people showed up. The boy spoke enough English to let me explain that I was perfectly fine being soaking wet while taking photos in the rain. More conveniently, one of them had keys to the artist’s studio, so I could go upstairs to try take some more rain pics on the flat areas of the roof. While on one of the upper areas, I noticed the girl taking my pic and managed to snap this one in return.
Let’s take pics of each other.
The rain wasn’t really enough for good rain pics by that point, but I did spend some time up there taking pics of wet flowers.
Wet Flower at the art studio
More wet flowers on the roof of the village art studio
Now I’m just waiting for that magic combination again – a warm day and a heavy downpour, preferably on a weekend when I’m at home.
UPDATE: Several similar expeditions did get me a few more good pics in the rain. The problem is that these storms keep happening when I’m in the middle of something important at work, so I keep only catching the last 5-15 minutes of heavy rainfall. My wife was always worried I’d slip and fall in the rain. That only happened once – on some of the very smooth stone stairs in my village’s central park. That’s now the one place in the village I don’t go to try to take rain pics.
