Water Droplets.

I was browsing through the internet just looking at other peoples blogs (lots of good ones out there, (check my blog roll for a few suggestions) when I came across some pictures of water droplets. This set me thinking how can I, capture them. 

So with a lot of trial and error I set up a shallow bowl in the kitchen sink, set my camera on a tripod just above the height of the rim of the dish and started shooting pictures as the tap dripped into the full dish.

I found I needed a flash gun off to one side and I also used a torch the other side so that the droplets were evenly lit as in the diagram above.

I set the aperture to f4.5 to allow lots of light in and a shutter speed of 1/200 sec to freeze the droplets.

I had to manually focus on the water as my camera wouldn't focus lock on the surface of the water. In hindsight I should have held a pen or something over the point where the drips fell and focused on that. Will have to remember that for next time.

The way the water bounces back up after the drip hits the water made for very interesting shapes.

The water almost looks like blown glass. For some of the shots I added a coloured reflector behind the bowl to give an extra colour cast to the pictures.

I hope you like these pictures and if you do how about trying to take some yourself, I'd be interested to hear how they came out. If anyone can suggest a different way to do this let me know either by the comments or contact me sections. I'm always looking for new ways to take pictures.