Falling Water
I’ve been trying for a long time to capture a water drop just as it, well, drops—and finally succeeded in this photo thanks to the magic of the Nikon wireless macro strobe kit, patience and fortitude, and good luck.
This may seem like an obvious thing to state, but the primary determinant of the appearance of a water drop photo is the light source used in the capture because the way the water drop looks depends on reflections within the drop. So using a flash on a water drop does stop the motion of the water drop, both its falling motion (as in this photo) and other movement like that caused by the wind and surface disturbances.
But the bad news is that you won’t get what you see (which is unlike natural light water drop reflections, where pretty much you know what the drop looks like). Sometimes if you are very lucky the resulting photo will be an interesting or beautiful image (like the strobe-generated reflection in the water drop below), but it will always be an artificial construct created with the magic of a flash of light.
View this photograph larger. Read the original story featuring this image.
July 10th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
[...] reflectivity of a water drop and the fact that a water drop is in almost constant motion (read more about these issues here). In this story, I’ll address the equipment I use—and ta [...]
November 26th, 2008 at 10:50 am
[...] What makes water drop photography a bit more difficult than run-of-the-mill photography of very small subjects is the extreme reflectivity of a water drop and the fact that a water drop is in almost constant motion (read more about these issues here). [...]