Fun With Photography - Water Splashes

Photos of water splashes are a constant source of amazement for many people, including photographers. While a macro lens, motion triggers, and special high-speed strobes are often used to capture these brief flashes of time, water splashes can be captured without a lot of special equipment. For this method of capturing water splashes you need a camera capable of manual settings and a bright sunny day.

Items Needed

• Water
• Food Coloring
• Oral Medicine Syringe and a Glass
• Tripod
• Helper or a Remote Camera Trigger
• Shiny Surface to Drop Water Onto
• Sunny Day

Step one
Set up the surface you will drop water onto outside in bright sunlight. Use a chair or box to raise the surface to be relatively even with the lowest setting of your tripod.

Step two
Fill a glass with water and add food coloring until the color you want is achieved.

Step three
Set your camera on the tripod at the minimum focusing distance and prefocus on the center of your surface. To achieve good focus use a stand-in item. The sun should be behind the camera. The oral medicine syringe numbers will work very well. You will want to use a shutter speed of at least 1/4000 of a second to freeze the water and a reasonably wide depth of field (F-stop around 8 or higher) to make sure you capture the full depth of the splash. You are likely to get some food coloring on yourself and your camera so keeping a lens cleaning cloth and a cotton rag for cleaning up random spills.

Step four
If you don't have an assistant to pour/drop the water for you then you'll need to pour the water and trip the remote at the same time. Don't worry about missing a shot, plan on taking numerous images to get the one you want. Using the oral syringe, drop the water at a steady rate onto the splash surface. While this is dropping, trip the shutter with the remote as much as possible.

Step five
Check your images to make sure focus is good and that exposure is ok. If the image is too dark try raising your film speed to increase the amount of light.

Hints
• Wear clothing you don't care about getting stained.


• If you want individual splashes use the oral syringe. If you want lots of drops and large splashes pour the water directly from the glass. The higher you hold the glass the larger the splashes will be...and the wetter your camera will get.


• Do this project OUTSIDE for clean up reasons.


• If you have a way to do so, set up a background behind the splash surface. A white sheet will work fine. It doesn't have to be close to the splashes.


• Shoot level or from slightly higher than the splash surface.