Tag:water
Mermaids! The word conjures up visions of beautiful sea creatures. Since the Disney version, their image has been seriously sanitised as Hans Christian Anderson’s story in 1837 was much darker. With the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish, they were also known as sirens, luring fishermen to their death. Their gift brought misfortune upon those it was bestowed on, and if a mermaid were offended, it would bring floods or other disasters.
Mermen
The male equivalent of a mermaid is a merman. Although sightings of mermen were less common than mermaids, there is still a lot of traditions and folklore about them.
Our Cast
Fortunately, for our mermaid shoot, our three mermaids and one merman weren’t dangerous. But like an actual mermaid, they did all have great difficulty walking over the sand with their tails on 😉
Our cast for the shoot were Jess Garrett, Jess Carolyn, Emily Reinhard and Michael Nguyen. All were great sports perching on hard, sharp rocks or flapping about in the water.
Jess Carolyn was our pregnant mermaid with a baby mermaid due in the next few weeks.
The day was warm, so they were all more than happy to hop into the water for us this time.
1. Splash Photography
Splash photography is an easy one. Luckily, I am extremely suited to digital photography. The amount of film that would be wasted on this doesn’t bear thinking about – but with digital, it doesn’t matter if you dump 20 shots to get one keeper. For the image above, I placed a teaspoon on a mirror – poured yellow food colouring on the mirror and put red food colouring in the teaspoon. My camera was set up on a tripod and in high-speed continuous mode. I had more red food colouring in an eye dropper, and at the same time, as I squeezed off a drop, I fired off the shutter using a remote. Flinging fruit and vegetables into water is also a hugely fun project (and, again, hit and miss). There is very little science to it, setup, throw and shoot. Out of every burst, you will prob get one or two keepers.Fish Tank = splash
For water splash photography, set up a fish tank against a non-reflective background (I prefer black). Fill the tank to about 3/4 full. Hard fruits such as lemons, limes, pomegranate, persimmon, apples, kiwi fruit and capsicums work the best. Berries are too light and soft – except for strawberries – you can use them but use them last as they will make the water murky as they get soggy. The full tutorial is HERE
Lighting
You do need a flash for splash to freeze the motion – Set your ISO to 200, F stop 11.0 and have a shutter speed of 1/125. You also need your camera on high-speed continuous. Wipe the outside of the glass between throws to save you from having to tidy it up in post. You will also need to tidy up the image using a clone tool, as you will get lots of unwanted drips and drops. It’s also an image that will look totally underwhelming until it’s edited. In the above image, you can see before – straight out of the camera, and after, with editing. I cloned out the distractions, bumped up the colour, deepened the blacks and applied a sharpen.2. Crystal Balls
3. Oil and Water
Oil and water is one of the easiest to do at home. Mainly because you probably have everything you already need there. Glass dish, oil, water. Good to go. I did a full tutorial on oil and water HERE.
4. Little Planets
Little planets are images made from your panoramic images. Using Photoshop, you manipulate the image to look like a little planet. It’s easy and loads of fun. The tutorial for Little Planets is HERE
5. Frozen Flowers
6. International Camera Movement
7. Multiplicity
Water Drop Refractions is the fourth in our weekend projects on VPC. Our weekly club event to do at home while we are still at stage 3 for COVID-19. Last week we were playing with Frozen Flowers. This week it’s rain repellant.
With the water drop refractions – I really don’t think there is a science to this.. it seems to be more blind luck and patience… or it could be my brain doesn’t process science well. I tried both brightly patterned backgrounds and flowers. Out of the two, I definitely found the backgrounds much easier to get a sharper focus on than the flowers. I also played around with different F stops from F2.8 to F11, and I’m not sure which was better.
One thing I didn’t notice when taking the shots was the detail on the water drop refractions. These came up more prominently when I looked at them on the computer – but weren’t as noticeable on the back of the camera, maybe because the detail is so small on the rear screen. So get the focus sharp and be prepared to notice more detail once you start editing.
Supplies
- Piece of glass – such as from an old photo frame and sized at around 11×14. You can pick them up quite cheaply from Kmart or the Chinese variety stores, or borrow one off the wall, (we won’t be damaging it) and you can put it back later. Leave it in the frame so you don’t cut your fingers, just remove the backing
- Invisible Glass or RainX – from the auto shops. It is a windshield rain repellent so your glass will stay clear. I picked up Invisible glass is $7.99 at supercheap for 103ml bottle
- Water in a spray bottle or hypodermic syringe (no needle)
- Flowers such as gerberas, daises, etc M&M’s, smarties, tic-tac’s, leaves, placemats, toys, Lego people, small toys, coloured cardstock, etc
- Camera on tripod
- Lenses: macro or anything in the 24-105 range
Setup
I worked outside on the patio as it saved dealing with extra lighting.
Method
- Clean glass with glass cleaner, then wipe the glass over with the rain repellent. Let dry and repeat once more.
- Place your glass between two chairs or a stack of books, paint tins etc. Glass needs to be about 40-50cm off the ground.
- Spray water on the glass in the centre with the spray bottle or add drops using a syringe. The rain repellent will cause the water drops to form beads.
- Place a background under the glass. This can be paper or coloured board. You can also google coloured backgrounds and either put them on your tablet under the glass or print them out and place them under the glass. I downloaded mine and printed them out.
- Free Colourful Backgrounds: Pexels.com and Wallpaperscraft.com
- Place the camera and tripod directly over the glass shooting straight down. If you have a centre column tripod try and reverse the tripod so the camera hangs underneath.
- Focus on the beads of water. I found manual focus is best for this. Once you are focused, you can move the background around under the glass without refocusing unless you move the tripod.
- Put different objects on the background underneath the glass to capture their reflection in the beads of water – use a solid background when using objects (you can use 2-3 plain backgrounds at once for more interest, just not patterned backgrounds with objects)
While I used a macro for my shots – you can also shoot them with a standard lens or even your phone. Check out Olympus Learn for more ideas on the water drop refractions. I did have loads of fun with this.. and will definitely have another go…