While biking to an assignment this weekend, I noticed a tree along one of the bike paths I was taking was still littered with rain drops from one of our many recent showers, enticing me to play around with my camera’s settings to see if I could create natural asters (star shaped light) from the sunlight refracting in the rain drops. To do this I set my camera’s aperture (opening) on the lowest possible setting I could which would still allow me to properly expose the image with minimal blur. In this case, I was able to pull off a very small aperture of f/22 with an ISO of 800 and a slightly longer shutter speed of 1/25. The small aperture causes the light refracting from the drops to form the many asters seen in the photo. There are many camera filters marketed to create “fake” asters, but with a little technical knowledge a photographer can create his/her own without spending any additional money, creating a more pleasing, natural image.
– Jasna Hodzic
