Water Drops - Behind the Shot

Water Drops - Behind the Shot From digital photography school...

Water Drops - Behind the Shot

One of the things I love about what is happening over in our forum area is that we’ve got thousands of photographers (there are actually 55,000 registered members now) all experimenting with different styles of photography.

While some are Pros (we have a growing community of them) many are practicing their photography in their spare time using the resources available to them. As they learn they share what they discover and how they’re achieving their results.


One such example of that this one of our members Arlon who recently give us a glimpse behind some of his Water Drop photography (see his Water Drop Gallery here).

Arlon wrote: “Water drops have always been a fascination of mine. Awhile back I tried my luck at a few and settled on a way that worked pretty easily for me. Here are a few drops and a self explaining shot of my setup. Takes me about 10 shots for every keeper.” Arlon also went to the trouble of photographing the setup of these shots and annotating it as follows:



The full thread in our forums (others are sharing their setups too) on this topic is located here. Stop by to share your own experiences.

setup using a plastic bag instead and a paint tray like this...







1) Try taking a 9 x 13 Pyrex casserole dish and set it on a piece of cloth, blue in the example and add about 1 1/2 inches of water.


2) Take a 3' x 3' piece of colored Mylar and tack in on a piece of foam board (cringled is good). Prop the Mylar up behind the long side of the dish a couple of inches away from it.


3) Set up a pipette about 2 ft above the water, or hang a bottle with pinhole as shown in the previous post.


4) darken the room and hold a flash about 2 feet from a camera set to 1 second and practice manually firing the flash at different angles as you let a drop go and press the shutter. Think like you were shooting pool and trying to get the light to fall right at the top of the water.

Here is a link to a video tutorial (Strobist: How to Photograph Water Drops with One Speedlight) that I watch and help me get better result. I didn't use the black paint tray, just a shallow glass bowl with a black piece of cloth underneath. I used a white piece of bristle board paper with a colored gel taped to it (but you can use anything, you can get some cool refection in the waterdroplet so be creative) and that's it. Just follow the video and then make your own changes. Oh yeah, I read somewhere in this forum that it is important to have the room dark, this is true. It doesn't have to be completely dark but the darker the better.