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:
“The biggest challenge is the depth of field with these. With the round bokeh, I usually use an aperture of f8. Most water drops I use f14. With the Bokeh Masters Kit the best effects are at an aperture of f2.8, but at this wide opening you have to deal with the extra light plus a narrow depth of field.
To get around this I try to have the best focus on the front of the drop which is usually the focal point of a splash. The other thing you can do is to have a very small splash on the top of the column so that most of it will be in focus. I find a bit of extra sharpening in post helps a bit. To bring down the light at f2.8 I use an ISO of 100 and bring my flash exposure compensation down to a power of 1/64 which usually takes care of this problem.
The second photograph is shot at f8 and this one is much darker and at this aperture you get quite a bit of vignetting. I had to raise the light levels and do a reverse vignetting in post to reduce the darkness at the sides. I think these have a cool effect, though. I like them. They appear to have kind of a “vortexy” effect.
So far the best results I have had are with the crumpled tin foil background. I bought all kinds of sequins, glitter, and other shiny stuff, but most of them don’t work too well. Glitter is good. It gives a nice sharp bokeh effect, but the hardest part here is to get a good light balance. I tried some tonight and I couldn’t get it very smooth. I keep looking and I’ll find something. Another thing that works well is a glitter card but I have to go out and find one soon.
We want More Corrie!
This is not the first time Corrie is featured on the blog, She wrote two great tutorials: The first is the Comprehensive Water Drop Photography Guide which is one of the most popular posts on the blog, and the second one is a guide on How To Shoot A Liquid Flow. Besides, she dome some crazy things with stop motion and colored gels.
About The Author
Corrie White is a photographer based in Ontario, Canada. She shoots breath taking water drops and other water inspired photographs. You can follow her art on her Flickr stream, on her site, or on Facebook.
