A couple of drips

Keith and I got together again to take some pictures. This time, we weren't in them. This should make them, overall, more pleasant to look at.

I saw this drip photography idea on the strobist site a few weeks ago and I thought it looked like a pretty cool thing to try. We tried a few different variations with clear vs. blue water, and straight vs. gelled flash. One of the keys to getting these shots (besides a macro lens) is to set up the flash to bounce off of a white card behind the water. Getting the shots is an interesting process. You basically try to time the drips (which were coming from a punctured sandwich bag taped to the light above Keith's dining room table-- I knew the gaffer tape I bought a while back would come in handy soon) and hope for something interesting. I was really hoping to get a shot with a new drip colliding with the splash of the current drip. This can create an interesting flat splash above the water column that is really difficult to figure out unless you know what you are looking at. We do plan to try this again sometime with the drips falling into a container that is completely filled. This should eliminate the line of the container edge that is visible in most of the shots we took today.

Another thing that is entertaining about making these shots is the almost unlimited latitude you have when adjusting the white balance. Working within the presets or experimenting with custom white balances produces some vastly different results. Because there is no "right" white balance for these shots its all up to what looks interesting.