A bit of Abstract

[Troy]

I can't recall where I put up my last abstract photos so I thought I'd start a new thread.

As you all know I've been enjoying a freezing Bavarian winter on my own this winter and starting to climb the walls a bit. Still three weeks to go before I get back to Thailand and normality...

Anyway, I was wondering around thinking what to do when I happened upon some youtube videos on splash photography. Some of them looked a little sophisticated and others were using expensive mechanisms to capture the 'splash'. All far too clever for me, until I watched some guy taking pictures of water splashing into a frying pan. Simple stuff and it looked fun, so I thought I'd give it a try...after several glasses of red wine.

The equipment:
A clothes horse, serving two purposes, firstly it enabled e to peg the back drop and secondly to hang the zip bag with water.
A zip bag with water pegged to the clotheshorse and with a darning needle sized hole in the corner. (knew that darning needle would come in handy some day)
A frying pan with some water in it. I filled it about half
I used my Nikon d7200 with a 110mm macro and a flash but I think any lend between 100mm and 300mm will do.

So I pegged the bag on the clotheshorse and let the water drip into the frying pan. I pegged a background of a bath towel behind and stuck the pan on the floor to catch the drips. I then placed a flash pointing towards the background at 1/32 and about 1" away. Camera was on manual at 1/250 and F14 although I played around a bit to get the setup to a decent exposure.

To start with the water dripped quite quickly, but as the water level in the zip bag drops the rate drips drop to a reasonable level. FOr me, it started at every half second and ended up around 7 seconds between drips.

I hand held the camera and put it on a tripod with a shutter release cable. This is just playing around at this stage so no need to get too professional over it. I was having some red wine fuelled fun!

Apologies, should have taken a setup photo, will do that next time.

Now for some results:

splash_5411.jpg

splash_5428.jpg

It's all a lot of trial and error about when to snap...I was on burst mode and the 1/32 flash meant it kept up most of the time.

[Troy]

I watched one youtube video where I saw some guy add dettol to turn the water white. As you may know it makes the water cloudy to start with and I thought that might look good so I added a small half a capful and took some more shots. Completely screwed the exposure, which had to be adjusted by closing the aperture down to around f25 or so but I got some cool effects...

splash_5435.jpg


splash_5444.jpg

Looked a little like the results of Snubbies meddling with bears...

[Troy]

A few more...

splash_5623.jpg

splash_5656.jpg

splash_5672.jpg

splash_5755.jpg

I spent the afternoon sorting out some of the better shots and did some post processing and found it pretty good fun.


If anyone has any ideas then throw them up, always nice to see different techniques used to get some fun shots.

I'll add a few more as I try them out. I'll probably add my old ones to the thread as well.

[DrWilly]

That’s cool!

[cyrille]

I don't get why you consider a droplet, however photographed, to be 'abstract'.

[Troy]

^ I guess knowing this is a child's soap bubble means it isn't abstract either...

abstract_2_0164.jpg

[Joe 90]

Your second pic Troy, gave it a graphite look..

[MarilynMonroe]

I spent the afternoon sorting out some of the better shots and did some post processing and found it pretty good fun.

They look quite cool, Troy! The last few I really like.

[cyrille]

abstract_2_0164.jpg

Mind... Blown.

By da...abstraact.

Like it exists only as a thought or idea.

Not a fukin bubble in a dish.

[Joe 90]

Post up your abstract pic Ciz!

Not much chance of that.

I'll do it for you..

[Troy]

Mind... Blown.

By da...abstraact.

Like it exists only as a thought or idea.

Not a fukin bubble in a dish.

Abstract in the sense that the object of the image isn't
immediately known.

I guess I need to try harder...

[david44]

Post up your abstract pic Ciz!

Not much chance of that.

I'll do it for you..

A Munch and a scream

[Switch]

It’s interesting.

The opinions of what is and isn’t funny on faceache are now banned from my computer.

Tictok post of pinky and perky voices also gone.

Why would anyone bother, but feceache insist that I deselect everything with my settings? Just stop bothering people with unwanted ads.

Troy
more please.

[DrWilly]

It’s interesting.

The opinions of what is and isn’t funny on faceache are now banned from my computer.

Tictok post of pinky and perky voices also gone.

Why would anyone bother, but feceache insist that I deselect everything with my settings? Just stop bothering people with unwanted ads.

Am I missing some context or is that completely random?

[Troy]

^ Abstract thoughts?

DSC_0198.jpg

This was one of the others I did a few years ago. Must have had a lot of red wine that day!

[malmomike77]

I watched one youtube video where I saw some guy add dettol to turn the water white. As you may know it makes the water cloudy to start with and I thought that might look good so I added a small half a capful and took some more shots

i'd go with pastis next time so you can recycle it after

quite enjoying the macro photography, just ignore Sympl getting hung up on English use.....again

[Edmond]

Interesting shots, Troy.


The camera on your phone is better than mine.

[Troy]

^ cameras on mobiles have come a long way but it will take some doing to match a dslr and off board flash unit.

These were just a trial with a single flash unit. I have a second one I could trigger once I can think of a decent setup. The frying pan was a bit small and limited the shot. Also my main tripod is in Thailand.

Setting the scene and guessing when to fire the camera are the fun parts to this.

[Troy]

Another simple setup that gave some fun images. I put a glass plate (I took the glass from a large picture I had hanging on the wall) between two chairs and then placed a pirex casserole dish on it. Underneath I dropped some coloured paper sheets. Chucked some water in the casserole dish and added a bit of olive oil. I twirled the water a bit to break up the oil, lit the scene with an LED light I had handy and took some shots with my macro from above...

abstract_A3_0234.jpg

I got lots of different types of images, but I liked the simplicity of this one. You need to be patient and ensure there are no small bubbles in the shot that I think spoil the simplicity of the image. This was using A4 sheets of tri-coloured paper that I am having trouble finding at the moment.

I can't set this up at the moment because it requires my sturdy tripod where the centre pole can be moved through 90 degrees, like a horizontal boom over the casserole dish. No way would I do it with my lightweight tripod because I don't trust the security of the camera mounting plate.

Obviously, these pics are not of professional quality, but I've probably had more fun taking them. I have them as my desktop backgrounds and they surprise many people when I tell them they're mine and not off the internet. The ones posted should be of sufficient quality if anyone wants them.

[helge]

I liked the simplicity of this one

That's not bad

This was using A4 sheets of tri-coloured paper that I am having trouble finding at the moment.

Stuck in the Red Sea ?