Water Drop Workshop

Today we took part in a Water Drop workshop with Jon Wild and he showed us how to capture images of droplet movement. I enjoyed working with this type of photography as it allows us to see what is usually invisible to the human eye. 

Harold Edgerton: Known as the master of high-speed photography, Harold Edgerton became interested in photography at a young age through his uncle who was a studio photographer and taught Harold the basics of capturing an image, development and printing. After studying Electrical Engineering at MIT and whilst investigating synchronous motors, Edgerton found that when a flash of light synchronized with a motor's turning parts, it made them look like they were standing still. During the 1930's, Edgerton began photographing even more and in 1937, one of his milk-drop photographs, titled Coronet, was included in the Museum of Modern Art's first photography exhibition. Towards the end of his career, he became a professor of MIT and although retired he continued to work in the institute's stroboscope Light Laboratory and taught the freshman course in stroboscope photography.

In the studio, we were shown a basic demonstration of how to create these images, we were then put in groups to take our own photographs and had to use our creativity when considering what backgrounds to use, what liquids to use, what colours to experiment with and had to try out the technique of high speed photography. At first I found it hard to time the shutter and when to press shoot but eventually got the hang of it and learnt what effects would be made on the water droplets depending on when the shutter was pressed.

Set up: below is an image to show the studio set up that we used. It consists of a tripod to prevent camera shake, a table to put the bath of water on, a background with a variety of patterns, two stands holding a stick to hang the bag of water which would produce the drops and a box to place the flashgun onto.

Equipment: the equipment used for this technique included a camera with a zoom lens which allowed us to photograph from a distance from the subject to prevent water damage to the camera. We used an off camera flash gun with a connected shutter release which enabled us to have a light source illuminating the water droplets and the shutter release made it easier to see what was being captured.

Camera settings: I set my camera to manual mode and white balance to flash, with shutter speeds of around 1/200 sec to 1/250 sec, an aperture of f/18 to obtain the sharpest image possible and an ISO of 100 to minimize grain. I set the flash gun to E-TTL (Evaluative Through The Lens) which means the gun will use a pre-flash to calculate the necessary flash power required before the shot is taken.

Post-production: although I liked my images, I felt they needed some manipulation as they were a little flat. I used PhotoShop CS6 to alter the brightness and contrast which added stronger colours to the photograph and used the Burn Tool to darken certain areas.

Below are my final images from this workshop: 

Risk assessment: I believe I carefully followed the health and safety precautions for this workshop as I handled all electrical items with more care than usual as we were working around water. I also acted with caution when changing the water and removing the bags of water from above to avoid spillage.

Evaluation: I liked this workshop and the different shots/effects that could be obtained. However, I would have liked to have had more time to experiment as I only got 3 shots that were decent. I liked using the coloured droplets in the bath of milk but they had to be captured quickly as the colours then ran out into the white milk. My favourite combination would be the clear water and the patterned backgrounds, I think they produce really clear and colourful images. Overall I am happy with the outcome of my water drop photographs and think it was a useful workshop for the future.