Winner of the "People Choice" award at an exhibit 11/06; Accepted for juried art show April 2004; Finalist (518 finalists out of 14,350 entries) in an on line photo contest.

A how to. Two essential ingredients: 1) a glass surface, (2) Rain-X, an automotive windshield product that causes water to "bead" (instead of just "slurp around formlessly"). Step 1 - Treat the glass with Rain-X per the product's directions. Step 2 - Place a subject below the glass. How far below the glass is optional. Different distances will give different effects. Step 3 -Place your camera above the "raindrops" (note that this shot can't be done well without a tripod; you can't compose the shot & hold the camera steady enough with the exposure times involved unless possibly you do it outside). It is critical that the "film plane", i.e. the back of the camera, be perfectly parallel to the glass surface. A bubble level on your camera will guarantee this assuming the glass is parallel to the ground - as my glass top dining room table is.) Step 4 - Focus very carefully on the drops, not the subject. Just as the distance from the drops to the subject will lead to different effects, the aperture setting that you use will likewise lead to different effects. If you look at another rain-x flag shot here - http://www.pbase.com/ed_k/image/54236424 - you'll see that compared to the image above the amount of flag showing is less and that the flag is softer (not as sharply focused) even though in both images the flag reflections in the drops are in sharp focus (because that's where we focused). Experiment, experiment, experiment with subject, subject distance, and aperture - see what you get. And while you're experimenting there is a third important variable which also greatly effects the results - the distance from the camera to the drops. So there you have it - all that I know about rain-x photography. Send me a link to yours when you're done.