Our bodies are 90% water...

A while back I decided to do a little experiment with water drops and a flash. The idea is you want to freeze the drop just as it connects with the surface of the water. It worked and I managed to get a few good pics out of the process. 

 

For week 2 of my Project 52, I decided to revisit the water drops....

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As I said last week, I got a brand new macro lens just after Christmas and I've been looking for an excuse to try it out. I figured that water drops are pretty small so why not combine my 2nd project with my macro lens and revisit something I'd tried in the past but wasn't completely happy with. Needless to say, the results this week were a little better in my opinion.

The idea behind shooting water drops is actually pretty easy; all you need is a camera, a flash (manual controlled) and some water (I won't get into the fact that you also need a pretty good sense of timing... I think I shot about 350+ pictures but I only managed to grab about half at the right time. Most of them were just pictures of the surface of the water).

What you do is you set up the flash pointing at something and reflect the light back at the water. You want manual control because that's what's actually going to freeze the drop as it hits the surface of the water, not the shutter speed. These pics were shot at 1/200 of a second but the flash was set at 1/32 power (1/10,000 of a second! That's pretty freakin' fast!)

The flash is actually pointed at a piece of red construction paper I had propped up behind one of Mrs. Special K's glass pie plates. I actually had a second flash off to the left with a blue gell on it to try and get some colour into the water drops as they rose up from the surface. Some worked, some didn't.

Click to make it get bigger

 This one is kinda cool even though it's slightly underexposed. You see that image in the red drop? If you look real close, you can actually see my reflection in the drop! (I accidentally nudged the flash with my arm so it was partially pointed at me instead of the water)

Click at your own risk...

 Now this one actually worked the way it was suppose to!

This pic may self destruct if you click it....

All in all this took me about two hours to do. Not too bad really, and I think the results are much better than my first attempt.

Now on to week 3; As of right now, I'm drawing a blank but that could change. I go back to work tomorrow so I might get inspired while I'm there. I may come across a really interesting looking tree, I may just ask Mrs. Special K for an idea (she's much more intellegant inteligent smarter than I am...). One way or another something will come to me....

As always, I'm open for suggestions.