Rainy Day Photography Idea: Water Drops

Upon viewing my attempt at this exercise, my twenty-something son mentioned it could quite easily be: paint, milk, or pig's blood (yech). Whatever you use, a great rainy-day activity is to set up a mini studio and shoot water drops (the cleanup of water is easier than those others). You'll actually get very 'in-tune' with your equipment doing this exercise. You'll have to figure out manual focus, exposure, and of course TIMING.

The world of digital makes for a much easier time doing all of this. I remember trying something like this in college (when we shot film) and developing 71 exposures of crappy shots, and 1 passable, yet blurry shot. The ability to make adjustments on the fly while viewing your shots on the LCD or tethered lightroom computer makes it much easier, but still a great learning experience.

I used a boom stand with a ziplock sandwich bag as my water drop source. A simple paperclip near a tiny hole in the bottom of the bag was my regulator. The bag was binder-clipped to the boom arm.

I used a glass dish (yeah… I know there was a pyrex logo on mine…but you could easily use one without the logo, or a plastic tray if you prefer). The reason I used glass was so I could slide colored paper underneath, and we only have pyrex bakeware in the kitchen. For an exercise its OK.

I also used an off-camera flash (580-style knockoff) and some colored paper folded in a "V" so it could stand up across from the flash. I used a small paper reflector near camera as well. The camera really needs to be steady--so a tripod is a must.

You'l also need to manually set everything–including focus. To focus, I used a piece of styrofoam on a skewer where the water was hitting, and then removed it after I set focus (auto will NOT work with this). My speed was set between 1/100 and 1/200 (sync speed for flash). Aperture was based on exposure, since dof was not a huge issue in such a small zone. 

I used a wireless trigger set between the flash and camera, but could easily have used a flash cable. For every successful shot I had, there were four or five crappy ones (but the odds are MUCH higher than with film). Try it and let me know your results!