Fire and Water

georgedingwall · Post by **georgedingwall** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:58 am

Hi all,

Well, not quite fire and water, the berries are from a Pyracantha Bush ( Firethorn).

I was experimenting with Hatch's technique for making water drop images last night and ended up with this strange sequence.

Well now I have to come clean. I was trying to make the drop larger than I could get with normal surface tension. I added a bit gelatin to the water and then made a normal drop. I waited for the gelatin to set a little and applied another drop, and the same a third time.

I was hoping that the drop would get larger in proportion, but instead got this cascade of drops effect in the image above.

I'm going to try a different approach today. I will use gelatin again, but this time I'm going to set it up so that a regular drip comes from the container of water/gelatin which will fall onto the berry. The hope being that a larger drop will build up over time. If I get any interesting results I'll post a followup image.

D200 with Sigma 150mm Macro lens + 1.4 X tele-extender.
0.5 sec @ F11
Tungsten lights
Finished in Photoshop CS2

Bye for now

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:50 am

Hmm, most interesting George. It would be interesting to see how your gelatin experiments come out. A novel idea I think, something for all of us to have a go at. A really nice set of images you've posted, thanks.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:29 am

It looks very promising George. just the three drops looks very cool and the berries give it a burst of color. A bright yellow or purple flower would look fantastic

georgedingwall · Post by **georgedingwall** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 7:12 am

Hi all,

My experiment to make a bigger water drop by dripping the gelatin water did not work.

Although I was able to build a bigger drop, the drop became less clear as it got bigger. I'm guessing that as some of the gelatin water dried a bit before the next drop fell, it caused some sort of cumlative effect of adding in a small amount of fuzzieness with each drop, so that by the time the drop was about half an inch in length, you couldn't get a clear, sharp image of anything you placed behind it.

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

Bye for now.

Carl_Constantine · Post by **Carl_Constantine** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:51 am

I like this. Very nice work George.