Capturing reflections in raindrops - macro photos

How to capture reflections in water drops/raindrops?

Capturing reflections in raindrop macros is easier as you think, on an amateur level, of course.

I captured this beautiful rose yesterday. We had several, heavy rainstorms during the night; big trees were uptorn by the roots not to mention the poor rose bushes.

This is what's left of the beautiful pink rose. It will take some time till other blooms open but in the meantime I can experiment with raindrop macro shots.

In my previous posts some of the commentators asked about how to capture reflections in water drops/raindrops.
Let's separate things; photo quality is one thing where we can speak about setting the shutter speed and the aperture etc., manually for every photo weather it's a portrait or a raindrop.
Reflections are simply there for everyone, amateurs or professionals, though there will be no reflections in a raindrop without a reflected image.
There is no secret there and it has nothing to do with processing either.

Each droplet reflects its surroundings, so in each of them you can find many different reflections by simply changing the angle you look at it.
A water drop is a (concave) spherical mirror which shows the reflective image inverted compared to the object (in this case).
To capture reflections in a raindrop you have to look for it unless you have serious knowledge of geometric optics.

Each of these photos were taken with a small, $100 point and shoot digital camera, which does pretty much everything for me and is always in my purse.
Photography is not rocket science, at least not for me and I assume you don't have time either to study physics or geometry , in order to capture a reflection on photo.

So this is the way I do it!
This rose is on a rose bush, not a single rose.
Each raindrop reflects some part of the bush, another bloom, leaves, stems, even the wall of the house. Let's concentrate on this raindrop at the edge of the rose petal! Some of the photos enlarge by clicking on them.

Look closer at the raindrop and you will see some colored spots in it. Now find the same colored spot with you camera; you can't see the whole reflection with naked eye because it is too small.
Walk around this raindrop and take a few shots from different angles too.

Notice that my eye level is always on the same level (height) as the droplet (principal axis) or subjacent (under its level) but never perpendicular from above.
This way the droplet is highlighted. With back-light the droplet will be very shinny but is is more difficult to capture it if your camera is faced to the light source.
Then simply focus on the droplet in the foreground, hold your shutter button down half-way and then re-frame the scene if needed. Shoot!

In this droplet you can see the rose bush, a few blooms and a window on the wall of my dentist's office but the reflection is upside down. I took these photos while waiting for the rain to stop, no special equipment or tripod were used.
See some more examples at my "Reflections in raindrops" - macro photo gallery.

My intention in this post was to encourage everyone to try it with whatever equipment you have. All you need is a little patience and the result offers a great satisfaction!