With the popularity of fashion shoots and this blog increasing interest of high speed photography, I thought it would be interesting to break down a shoot that involves both, Kamerakind were happy to assist.
If you ever thought that water drops are polite beings, just waiting for us to set up a strobe and take their picture, you could not be more in error.
It is true that usually they play nice and cooperate, but every once in a while they show their true nature to tell us, "Hey! we have feelings too!"
Photographer Corrie White has been taking plenty of water drop photographs over the years and between the regular awesome photos she found a few where the drops were just doing their thing.
More pictures and a description from Corrie after the jump Click to continue ›
I think it was in Superman 3 where Lex Luthor built a super computer that captured superman in a bubble to suffocate him. (conveniently ignoring the fact that the man of steel can walk the moon which does not have breathable air).
A few weeks ago Corrie White shared a tutorial on creating a spactacular bokeh for a water splash photograph. When I saw it, I immediately thought "hmm..... this may play nice with the Bokeh Masters Kit". So I asked Corrie if she wanted to experiment and play. She said yes. Yay!
A few weeks later Corrie sent me this wonderful photograph of a Bokehlicious background with a spectacular splash.
This is how Corrie explains it: Click to continue ›
Alan Sailer is a master of blowing up stuff. Last year Alan declared a war on Christmas ornaments and hit them with a pallet shot from an special homemade, high speed, air canon. But then he also hit just about anything with stuff shot from that air canon.
Now Alan has a new hobby worth noting. He explodes things with powerful firecrackers and captures the microsecond just after the explosion. Alan uses a deadly home-built strobes that have a very short exposure length and a DIYed debris detector. The results are interesting and freaking at the same time.
Here are some of the stuff that Alan exploded (click any of the images for more information): Click to continue ›
These photos are the results of such experimenting. I had nothing to do, and came across some high-speed drop and splash photos. I thought I give it a try, but it seemed boring and overdone by others, that's when fire popped in my mind.
Photographer Fabian Oefner creates amazing sculptures of pigment colored salt by placing it on a thin plastic foil stretched on a speaker. He calls them Dancing Colors.
The shutter is opened for a few seconds in a darkened room, and once the speaker starts vibrating the pigmented salt rises to the air, a microphone picks up the noise and triggers the flashes. This is a pretty typical setup for high speed photography. Low power is used for capturing sharp images, 4 strobes are used as key and another 2 as fill.
I am always keeping a close eye on Corrie White's work. She seems to always have a new trick up her sleeve.
A few days ago I saw Corrie White's amazing splash with bokeh photograph and was drawn to it. I asked Corrie how she took the image and she was kind enough to walk DIYP readers through it. If you want the more basic stuff, visit Corrie's Comprehensive Water Drop Photography Guide Click to continue ›
Michael Ross is not only a talented photographer, he is also somewhat of a maker. If you don't believe me check his Digital Light Wand and Programmable Orb Tool tutorials. His latest endeavor is a super functional Arduino based high speed trigger.
I did not play with the kit, but it seems that it is one of the most well thought and function rich triggers out there. Click to continue ›
Markus Reugels, a German photographer creates wonderful photographs of carefully selected backgrounds encapsulated in water drops.
The technique, while sound simple, is actually quite complex. It needs to control the shape of the drop, the background and the lighting to catch a perfect "refraction". Of course, the whole thing needs to be repeatable so Markus can adjust the final image. (This is not surprising from someone who can shoot two drops collide with a speeding pellet)
And if that was not enough, to take an image like that you need to focus twice: you need to focus the drop "lens" on the background and then you need to focus the "Real" lens on the drop.
The results are amazing. Click to continue ›
