Lemon bubbles....wiling away a wet day in Brisbane

It's a wet old day here in Brisbane, so I decided to get out the macro lens and play with some liquid macro photography!

I was inspired by one of the macro tutorials in a Kelby Training online tutorial, to shoot a lemon with bubbles.

The set up was easy enough - light tent, with a black background. My 5D II + 90mm Tamron lenses was mounted on a tripod, and I placed a square vase on an upturned bowl (to raise the vase off the bottom of the light tent).

My speedlight, sitting behind the whole set up, was dialed down to 1/64 power and triggered remotely.  Then I just experimented with aperture for different effects.

I did a few test shots with the lemon clipped into place to check focus, then added a litre of soda water, which bubbled around the lemon.

Here are the final results (including the set up of the shoot) :)

ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/6 sec

ISO 800, f/8, 1/80 sec

 

High speed water shots - and how to do them!

It's another wet weekend in Brisbane, and I found this post I'd started collecting notes about, but had not yet posted it.

I'm fascinated by high speed photography - particularly high speed images of water splashes, like this stunning one from Martin Waugh. Check out his website to see a consistently amazing portfolio of water splashes and water collisions. What's the difference? Keep reading....

(c) 2006 Martin Waugh at www.liquidsculpture.com

Martin describes in very general terms, his process for creating what he calls Liquid Sculptures and you can see a picture of his shooting set up.

I was so interested in his work, I scoured every part of his site, and came across this slow motion video which shows what actually happens to a water drop when it hits a shallow pool of water (a splash), and what happens when a water drop which has "bounced off the pool of water" and collides with another falling drop (a collision, like the image above).

Anyway, as the rain continues to fall, I'm feeling a bit inspired to keep playing with water and eventually get to images like Martin's. I suspect it's going to take a l-o-t of practice :)