Tonight I'd thought I'd share a selection of images I have created over the years using water, rainbow paper and a flashgun. To shoot this type of image and freeze the motion of the water you would usually use a really fast shutter speed. If you are providing the light using a flashgun you would need to use High Speed Sync and a super high shutter speed. My flashgun and remote doesn't have this function so I have to use other methods.
I shoot these in complete darkness, using bulb mode and a very low power flash strength. This enables me to freeze the motion of the water whilst maintaining some semblance of movement. The trade off for this is I either need a high iso or a wide aperture. You need to find the happy medium between strength of light and image quality. You could bump up the flash power but you run the risk of the light bouncing around the room you are shooting in and the crispness of the water would be gone.
Here I shot the water from a running tap in my kitchen. I placed a sheet of rainbow holographic card behind the running water. There is a great deal of repetition to gain satisfactory results by moving the card, the light source and changing the camera settings. Once you get everything right you end up with these beautiful moments in time captured which are invisible to the naked eye.
Here I used the same sheet of rainbow card propped up behind a bowl brimming with water. I set up a cloth draped over the top of it on a light stand. I saturated the cloth and noted where the drips were falling. I set focus to this point and turned off the lights. This really was trial and error, timing when to manually fire the flash proved almost impossible. Unperturbed I continued until I got what I was looking for.
This one gave me nightmares and had me putting off trying to bag the shot. It's the same principle as the shot above but with a mid exposure lens and tripod swap. There are so many variables to get wrong that I nearly didn't bother trying it. I'm glad I did as I managed to nail it on the first attempt. Testament to not talking yourself out of something because you don't think you can't do it.
Using the back of a spoon directly beneath the running tap spreads the water into a turbulent sheet and yields some astonishing results. After I had bagged a few tasty looking sheets I decided to pair it with another lens and tripod swap. This time swapping to my favourite (and now broken) office chair mat with Lauren stood behind. Another double I'm very fond of. I shrouded Lauren with the www.lightpaintingbrushes.com black fibers paired with an orange gel attachment.
I hope you enjoyed following along with this post and I hope you might get inspired by it to give it a go yourself. Shot in the main using the below gear.
Sony A7ii
50mm lens
Macro extension tubes
Tripod X 2
Rainbow card
Yongnuo 560iv and trigger
Lightpainting Brushes tools
Kitchen tap
Patience
Thanks again for reading and I hope you have a spectacular week ahead.
Happy days
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