Kinetic Colourful Waterdrops

I am obsessed with water drops. There, I said it. It all started with noticing the way the water drops exploded when I was watering my hanging baskets. Then came a downpour. CLICK CLICK CLICK. Though I was excited to capture those moments I wanted more. I wanted control over lighting and I wanted to add colour.

I decided I would set something up and intentionally try and capture exploding water drops instead of relying on nature.

First challenge - to capture water you need a lot of light but I don’t have an external mount flash I could position or pocket wizard etc. It was supposed to rain today but turned out relatively sunny. Problem solved - sort of. Using mirrors and managing the angle of the sun I was able to make it work for me.

Second challenge - colour. How was I going to get colour reflected in those drops? I played with different coloured backdrops and was happy with the effect - but wanted MORE. I wanted a cacophony of colour! A veritable assault of colour. City Palette Magazine came to the rescue! I ripped up the magazine and used it’s pages to provide the different colours I was looking for.

Third challenge - too few hands. If I was dropping the water into my bowl and pressing the release I was too clumsy to position the water drops in my focal range and get the timing right. I enlisted my daughter Alice to assist me. It only cost teaching her the secrets of how to set up these water shots. She is such a cool kid and an amazing photographer in her own right. We worked together in perfect harmony, taking turns being photographer and being water dribbler. We worked out a really cool system where we swapped memory cards as we swapped positions so our work didn’t get mixed up.

It was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about macro photography, spent the afternoon with my daughter and even got a bit of a tan in the process. Next challenge is to see if I can get smaller drops of water suspended on the top. But that is a project for another day.