Oil and water photography produces gorgeous abstract images full of colour. It’s something that can be done easily at home – with items you have at hand. This is awesome, considering we are all in lockdown here in Victoria for the foreseeable future and getting supplies is difficult.

Supplies

• A glass dish. Size is a personal choice but the bigger the dish the bigger the image. I used a rectangular glass pyrex dish from Ikea. It’s particularly good for this type of thing as the logo is in the corner, not the centre of the dish as they usually are. So its easy to avoid including the logo in the image but any glass dish will work if its deep enough
• Glass cleaner (to clean your glass), paper towels or old towel
• Camera with macro lens or lens with macro extension tubes
• Tripod
• Cooking oil – any sort will do from olive oil, canola, vegetable, rice oil. they all work the same
• Dishwashing liquid
• Bright coloured backgrounds – wrapping paper, coloured patterned fabric, your iPad with a bright wallpaper on it. The brighter your backgrounds are the better. Don’t worry about the patterns on them – the backgrounds will be blurred out. Just go for bright colours.
• Something to stand your dish on. I used a photo frame with just the glass left in the frame. You can create legs from tins or cans or soft drink. Two wooden chairs also work. You need to be able to create a bridge to sit your dish on with the coloured backgrounds underneath

The Setup

Place your coloured background on a table or bench, and create the supports for your dish with the tins or chairs. If using chairs, you will need to place your background on a stack of books, so it’s not too far from the dish. You need it approximately 20-25 cms below the glass. I downloaded some colourful wallpapers to the iPad and used them under the setup for my backgrounds. Check out the free downloads at Wallpaperplay.com.

Fill your glass dish with water, almost to the top ( fill when it’s in place rather than fill and move). The more water you use, the deeper it is, the more it will hide the manufacturer’s logo on your dish.

Next, add some dishwashing liquid; just a dessert spoon is usually enough. This makes the bubbles more vibrant and makes them rounder and a bit thicker. Again, it’s not essential – you can work without dishwashing liquid, but I like how it makes the bubbles more 3D rather than flat.

Adding the Oil

Lastly, add your oil. How much is a personal choice and very much based on the size of your dish. With more oil, the more bubbles and less negative space. The larger the surface area of your dish, the more oil you will need. Start by adding a couple of tablespoons but ended up using just under a 1/4 cup. It was a big dish. I also found the oil bubbles tended to gravitate to the edges of the dish. It’s easier to add more oil bit by bit than have to start again if you have added too much.

Give your concoction a gentle stir to break the oil up. If your bubbles are too big, add a bit of dishwashing liquid and stir again. The more you stir, the more the bubbles will break up and become smaller. Stir gently as you don’t wash dishwashing liquid bubbles. If you want giant bubbles, go easy on the stirring. It does take a while for everything to stop moving after you’ve stirred. I waited, and waited… then left, made a cuppa, and came back ten mins later.

I shot with Olympus and used the 60mm macro. A macro is really essential for these types of shots. You can get away with a standard lens, but you will have to crop heavily. If you don’t want to invest in a macro lens, extension tubes also work and are quite inexpensive.

Camera Settings

In manual mode, I set the camera to F2.8 (it was the lowest my macro would go), ISO 200, and the shutter speed to the correct exposure for the available light, which in my case was 1/100. I then added +2 for exposure compensation to be nice a bright. A longer exposure isn’t a problem (but the moving bubbles are, so wait for them to settle a little each time you stir them). Next, attach the camera to the tripod, place it over the setup (carefully), and ensure the camera is shooting straight down. Try not to bump the dish, or everything will start moving again.

Focus on the bubbles!

Using live view, focus on the bubbles, not the water. This will ensure your background is nicely blurred and the bubbles are the star. Fire off some shots, move the camera around to shoot different sections of your dish as well as giving the liquid a very gentle stroke from time to time to move the bubbles to a different composition, and change the backgrounds out regularly

I shot around 200 images during my oil and water photography session and ended up deleting lots, as some were very similar, and in others, the bubbles weren’t as sharp as I would have liked. However, my tally at the end was 29 keepers, so it’s a lot of gain for a simple setup. So, while you have it all set up, shoot as many as you can.

Editing

Editing was minimal. I imported it into Photoshop and slightly increased the exposure, vibrance, contrast, and dehaze. Then it was a light sharpen and crop. I used the spot healing brush to edit out stray tiny bubbles for more negative space in some cases.

I also gave the back a rest (you cant avoid stooping over the setup), left it overnight. Then, the next day, I came back and gently dragged some shapes into strands rather than bubbles with a fingernail.

I found Oil and Water photography surprisingly easy and loads of fun. It’s something you can do at home without any extra supplies. And definitely not as hard on the back as the Water Refraction drops were.