DIYPhotography.net

Sometimes it seems that everything is against us. Nothing is working. It's as if the rules of the universe themselves were built to set us back. Well, not for Andy Price.

If the image above looks weird, it is because Andy found the perfect way to defy gravity.

With a little fairy dust, a Whiskey bottle and some tubing, Andy DIYed his gravity defying device. Oh, yea, did we say this was not a composite?

Andy Explains:

Water Flowing Upwards Setup

The difficulty is getting liquid to flow from the bottle and look real. What I found was that because the glass (and everything else, except me) is upside down the bottle has to tilt upwards and it is difficult to avoid the water flowing from the bottle without it being obvious that it is upside down.

In order to control the flow I broke the bottom off of a whiskey bottle (empty of course!) and stuck the jagged end into a plastic vitamin tub into which I had inserted your standard 5mm plastic tubing. The other end of the tube is gaffered taped to a plastic bag behind the camera.

This allowed me to control the water flow and avoid tale-telling bubbles. Talking about bubbles, it is important to get the neck of the bottle completely full. It just does not look very convincing with the bubbles going the wrong way. A good way to do this is to have the bottle as full as you can before you start and use a big bag of water.

The entire contraption was then gaffer taped to a 'stick in a can' (literally a piece of wood inside a can which is filled with cement to provide a flexible support on a solid base) The bottle has to be angled slightly upwards or it will look odd when the image is rotated.

The glass is suspended on invisible thread (as can be seen in the set up pic) although this did not matter in the end as the bottom of the glass is not showing.

Lighting

Support: I used my DIY still life table. It is a sheet 60" x 27" of white Perspex (we love Perspex) bent through about 40 degrees with a hot air gun.

The sheet of perspex is suspended on one of those portable clothes rails (you can vary the height from about 3 ' to 5') using three shower curtains metal hooks.

The front piece is rested on a trestle and for heavier set ups a second trestle can be place further back (although this could compromise the lighting)

Lights and placement: I used black cards either side of the glass manage reflections, and to create Bright Field Lighting.

Two flashes were used - Youngnuo 460 at 1/2 power behind the perspex to illuminate background, and a Canon 540 at 1/4 power beneath perspex.