Making a Splash

Have you ever had one of those moments where your feeling completely unmotivated, but something so random occurs and the inspiration just doesn’t stop flowing?

I had one of these moments recently, I was struggling to find motivation in finding some new work to do for my final project in university. It was just another rainy day here in the UK and it was actually a decent downpour, nothing like the rain you get in the tropics but still some of the best rain that I have seen in the UK. anyway, our backyard was under about an inch of water. the water by the back door was clear over the pavers and while in a moment of zoning out, I noticed how nice the water droplets looked hitting the surface of the water.

Before I knew it, I had my camera out and was taking photos, I did however have a slight issue with low light and the requirement for fast shutter speeds, this was easily fixed by using a pair of off camera flashes.

It was a lot of fun, and the outcomes I was able to achieve are pleasant to look at, however, it was very much hit and miss as only God can know exactly when and where an individual drop of rain will fall. The solution to this…

Make my own rain…

Granted you can’t beat the real thing, but I think this still looks good.

But what I really wanted to capture, was a droplet up close, and that would take a bit more of an effort. I set up a backing tray full of water with my two flashes set up with one on each side and used a pipet full of milk to create definition in the droplets and called on my timing skills and a lot of luck with the shutter.

Again, I do like these images, but I wanted more, so I tried again, this time putting a blue gel on one of the flashes that was located in a high and pointing down. And a red gel on the second which was positioned at a very low angle so that it would only light up droplets that were above the surface of the water.

Some of these images have been used as part of the final art show in my studies, along with some other images both in large scale print and in a book.