Photoblog 2.0

Weight of Water, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Back from my quick trip to Yosemite with the kids, Phyllis reminded me that I don’t need to go anywhere to take pictures. Sometimes one’s own backyard is more magical than any destination. Thanks, Phyllis!

This photo shows a translucent Dahlia petal with water drops resting on the petal and refecting a peony bush in California’s moderate autumn. The petal was blowing slightly in the wind. In order to get the depth of field I needed at a fast enough shutter speed to stop the motion (1/40 of a second), I boosted my sensitivity setting to ISO 640. Raise high the ISO, photographers!

In post-processing, I edited out noise from higher-than-my-normal ISO selectively. I didn’t do anything about noise in the petal or water drop areas, because diminishing the noise would have softened these elements, and I wanted them to stay crisp.

You’ll notice that I used quite a combination of macro equipment for this extreme close-up (see below). The Nikon 6T is a + 2.9 diopter close-up filter, and the 5T is a +1.5 filter. Since stacking these filters is additive, I get +4.4 diopters magnification using this pair, and relatively good optical quality in the bargain.

[200mm f/4 macro lens (300mm in 35mm equivalent terms), 36mm extension tube, Nikon 6T and Nikon 5T close-up filters stacked, 1/40 of a second at f/36 and ISO 640, tripod mounted.]

Worlds Within, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a photo from about a year ago. I stood in my garden and saw these water drops clinging to a web. The rain had stopped and the sun was shining. The water drops were against a dark background, but reflected the colors of the garden.

I exposed at an intermediate aperture (f/18) so that a horizontal cross section of water drops were fully in focus.

[200mm f/4 Nikon macro lens, 300mm 35mm equivalent, 1/60 of a second at f/18 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Iceberg, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a reflection of a white iceberg rose bud, photographed on a mirror. I used a spray bottle to make the water drops, and lit the reflection with natural afternoon sunlight.

[85mm PC Micro-Nikkor, 127.5mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 2 seconds at f/51 and ISO 100.]

Water Marbles, photo by Harold Davis.

I first blogged this photo in June of 2006 in a supporting role in a story called More Drops. I think “Water Marbles” deserves a story of its own.

Morning Pink, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

As the sun rose, the light on these tiny water drops along a petal on a dahlia flower grew translucent. The water drops glowed with pink, and as they did, so did I.

Related images: Morning Star, Gerbera Drop, Camellia Decolletage, Dahlia Drops.

[200mm f/4 macro, 300mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 36mm extension tube, +4 diopter close-up filter, 1/6 of a second at f/45 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Dahlia Bud Light, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In the morning, chaos of kids and family permitting, I like to photograph in the garden. The sun was rising, there was little wind, and water was just sliding off the dahlia drop. I used an improvised reflector–the white handkerchief I keep in my camera kit–to send some light into the dahlia bud, otherwise dark against the background.

Related images: Beneath the Dahlia, My Favorite Worlds, Navigation and a Water Drop.

[200mm f/4 macro, 300mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 36mm extension tube, +4 diopter close-up filter, 1/8 of a second at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

In The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Lord Dunsany, wrote about magic beyond the fields we know. You step out into the ordinary, everyday fields that you see all the time. Maybe these fields are right next door to your house in suburbia. Willy, nilly you may be swept into a magical realm where nothing is ever the same.

I take Dunsany’s fantasy as a metaphor for photography. If you are willing to look carefully, and are open to the spirit of adventure, you never know what magical territory you may visit. If you have been changed by the experience, well that is no affair of mine.

View this image larger.

We were on family vacation in a rental house in Sea Ranch. Our house was in a suburb of vacation houses. (Although Sea Ranch isn’t supposed to be suburban, I know a suburb when I see one.) Across the street was a brown field. The fog came in, and on our last morning I used my macro lens to explore the magic that lies beyond the fields we know.

[105mm f/2.8 macro lens, 157.5mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 36mm extension tube, +4 diopters close-up filter, 1/3 of a second at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

In the garden in the early morning I found rain drops suspended on a spider’s web. Nearby, pink Gerbera Daisies grew. These flowers were reflected and contained in the water drops. The technical challenge was to obtain high depth-of-field with subjects in constant motion from the wind, subjects so tiny that any motion was magnified.

I locked the camera’s mirror up to eliminate one possible source of vibration. As I waited for the moment of perfect calm to squeeze the remote release, I thought about the worlds inside each water drop, suspended animation waiting for a photographer to come along.

[200mm f/4 macro, 300mm 35mm equivalent focal length, 36mm extension tube, +4 diopters close-up filter, 1/8 of a second at f/40 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Simple Pleasures, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Wet flowers in my garden after early morning rain are not profound. These are simple pleasures.

To read more about my session with these flowers, and the water drops on the flowers, see Heart Like a Gerbera and Patience.

Gerbera Drop, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

It rained overnight, rare for around here in July. We were in a cloud in the morning. Wisps of fog, and natural water drops in the garden. Conditions were perfect for water drop photography: overcast but bright, and periods without wind.

I photographed the reflection of a Gerbera daisy in a drop of water on a Gerbera petal using my 200mm f/4 lens, a 36mm extension tube, and the Nikon 6T closeup filter.

The photography took a bit of time. This is precise work, and the exposure can only be taken at the right instant. I had the mirror locked up, and it was hard to tell whether the water drop was still enough, and how well the framing worked. I had a hand blocking the viewfinder to keep backlight from creeping in and spoiling the exposure.

I considered: what was the most important skill for this kind of photography? Patience.

If you look carefully in the reflections in the large drop on the petal (not the one with the Gerbera reflected, try the larger size), you can see two lumps. These lumps are myself and Julian. Julian was sitting with me on the wet grass in our garden. Waiting for me to finish photographing. Waiting for me to play a game of chess with him. Another kind of patience.

Day Lily, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This morning I was up early. Even though I had a great deal of writing and office work to do, I couldn’t resist photographing this beautiful day lily while Phyllis got the kids to school. This was a three second exposure at f/36 with my 200mm f/4 telephoto macro. Fortunately, the wind paused for me as I took the picture, and Phyllis came back with a warm caramel macchiato for me, bless her.

White California Poppy, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I’m used to thinking of the California poppy as a wonderful red-and-orange ragamuffin that grows along our roads almost like a weed. The red version is a great flower to photograph, for example Wind and California Poppy Quartet. But how nice to also have a white California poppy, Eschscholzia californica ‘Alba’, in my garden.

On Saturday morning I photographed this bud at f/40 with my telephoto 200mm macro lens to create focus on the water drop near the stem of the flower and a nice bokeh background effect. Inside the house, the kids were running wild, and I was glad to be out in the peace of my garden photographing flowers in my pajamas, a cup of coffee on its way.

Why am I so interested in photographing water drops? What are the special challenges and techniques associated with photographing water drops? Do different water drops have different characteristics (in other words, is there a taxonomy of water drops from a photographer’s perspective)?

Orchid Water Drop, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger. Read more about this image.

Leaving the technicalities of water drop photography aside for a second, water drops interest me because they are, as poet William Blake put it, a world in a grain of sand. Each water drop seems like a complete world, or universe, to me with its unique colors, reflections, and refractions. These worlds are ethereal and ephemeral, meaning they are fragile, ghostly, almost like magical parallel universes.

Technically, water drop photography is macro photography with some subject-matter specific difficulties. Macro photography in and of itself is one of the most technically difficult kinds of photography because once you get really close to a small object, inherently shallow depth-of-field, precise focus, and motion—even the slightest motion—are all issues that can defeat a photograph, no matter how beautiful it would be otherwise.

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.

There are some techniques you can use to help abate the motion problem. For example, the photograph at the top of this story was taken using a macro flash. Here’s a story I wrote about using flash to enhance water drop photography. Under the right conditions, using flash to light water drops can both stop the motion of the water drop and also provide sufficient depth-of-field.

As with photographing flowers in the field, one can use a special clamp to hold down the plant or branch that “hosts” the water drop. Here’s more information about using clamps to control the motion of a water drop so one can make a long exposure.

Once your lens is really close to a water drop, you may as well realize that your depth-of-field is going to be shallow, even with the lens stopped down as far as it will go. The only remedy for this is precision. Precision about focus, about placing the camera focal plane parallel to the subject, and about composition. You may find that a magnifying eye piece attachment helps with this.

Here’s where the precision of composition comes in. If you recognize that even at f/64 there will not be all the depth-of-field you might like, then you need to focus on the key elements of the composition, hopefully towards the center of the image front-to-back. For example, in the photo of water drops on an ice plant below I focused on a water drop very much in the mid-zone of depth.

Nature’s Harp, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Read more about this image.

Yes, Virginia, there is a taxonomy of water drops. Water drops from irrigation have very different characteristics from water drops generated by a spray bottle or in the studio. And water drops that are genuinely from rain are best of all. Of course, it is really rare to get water drops from rain in the sunshine. Because even if it rains and then is sunny, water drops will then evaporate very quickly. So if you are interested in photographing water drops, and there comes a day of rain followed by sunshine, get out there with your tripod and macro gear. Particularly if the day is without wind.

Once you spend some real time looking closely at water drops, you’ll be able to distinguish rain drops from “artificial” water drops. For example, the photo below shows a classical “real” water drop on an echinacea flower in my garden.

Echinacea Water Drop, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger. Read more about this image.

To learn more: Water Drops category on Photoblog 2.0, Water Drop Photograph Techniques.

Carobrotus Edulis Drop, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Close up, the water drops on the heliotropic Carobrotus edulis flowers (a/k/a ice plants) looked ethereal, ephemeral, and pretty in pink.

Photographed with my 200mm f/4 macro lens, positioned on the tripod using the 200mm’s built-in tripod collar, a 36mm extension tube, and the Nikon 6T close-up filter at ISO 100, 1/8 of a second, and f/40 for maximum depth-of-field.

Related story: Water Drop Photograph Techniques.

Nature’s Harp, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

It had rained lightly overnight. But the water drops were quickly disappearing in the morning sun. I went out into my garden with my camera bag and tripod while Phyllis got the kids to school.

There was also a soft breeze. The wind and sun felt caressing, but the wind was enough to make extreme macro photographs a problem, because even small motions are magnified when you are up close.

I spotted these water drops on a spider web attached to the stems of some heliotropic ice plants (Carobrotus edulis). The spider web acted to keep the water drops pretty much still. You can see some of the heliotropic (meaning they open when it is sunny, and close at night) flowers of the plant reflected in the water drops.

The shape of the stems with the web and drops reminds me of a harp, hence my title for the photo. But I also see this as some kind of minature fiber construction.

Photographed on tripod with my Nikon 200mm f/4 macro lens at f/36, using a shutter speed of 1/6 of a second at ISO 100.