Water Drop Macro

I had a good time playing with macro water drops today!

There are more on my flickr if you like these!
It isn't all that hard, except for focusing! Here are a couple of pullback shots:

As you can see, I just built up to towers 'o packages from my pantry on either side and laid a yardstick across the top. Taped the hose to it with clear packing tape, using the tape to hold the button down. The main faucet controlled the drips. Sometimes I did slower drips (like one every 10-15 seconds) and this gave the calmer water look like the pink one. Sometimes I did faster (1-2 drips per second) which makes for more ripply water, but it is easier to catch the right moments because of the steady, more predictable rhythym. With the slow drips, I missed 3 of every 4, with the fast drips, I got 3 of every 4!

In the sink is a tall vase with the skirt of my dd's sundress wrapped around it. The water is full to the very top, overflowing with each drip. Yes, the fabric got wet, wet, wet! I used an open binder behind for some of the color as well. I also at one point draped part of the dress up there. The blue ones were done exactly the same but with a long, flowy black skirt with lots of tiny teal flowers on it. For the crown looking ones, I laid a 5X7 piece of glass across the back of the vase so it had something to splash on.

I couldn't get my tripod close enough, so I used big cans, an upside down bowl and various cookbooks as a tripod. To focus, i put my finger right where the drops were hitting the water, and then moved the camera back and forth until my finger was in focus. WAY more effective than the trial and error I started out trying!

I used my remote to fire the camera. I sometimes handheld the unmodified flash off to the side, triggering it wirelessly, and sometimes had it on the camera.

I hope this gives you some ideas! It was really fun once I started getting good shots. The flash is essential!

Bubble Macro

OK so I tried something new and fun and thought I'd challenge all of you to try it too!

This is macro photography of soap bubbles.

I used ordinary bubble solution, mixed with glycerin. 80% bubble stuff, 20% glycerin. (I just eyeballed it, 'cause I'm lazy like that.)Trust me, the glycerin is so worth it! The glycerin makes the bubbles last 3-4 minutes instead of 15-20 seconds. You can get glycerin at health food places by the massage oils.

My macro lens can do 1:1 and cover an area of about 1-1.5 inches. SO I bought a 3 inch metal ring at the craft store (50 cents) and left the tag on. Used big metal cans and a dowel to suspend it over the cup of bubble solution:

(When the tag gets too soaked to use any more, I plan to use a small strip of flannel or something.)

For my background, I made a really cheapo stand out of foam core:

I used a dark purple paper as my background. Black works best, but I was aiming for the purple challenge. Darker colors work better than brights, for sure! I made the slots on my background stand too loose and it wobbled. So I remembered the old stuff-your-bra trick and used kleenexes to stabilize it:

I set the background at an angle so that it wouldn't glare back through the bubble.

The camera and light were positioned with both at an angle to the bubble:

I was using a desk lamp with a daylight balanced florescent bulb in it, because my flash batteries are dead and I'm impatient like that.

I adjusted focus manually and then used my remote to trip the shutter:

Because the lamp needed it, I held a kleenex in front of it to diffuse it. Yeah, who knew kleenex had TWO good uses in photography? First stabilizing the background, now this!

And the final result?

I think it is beautiful!

Creating a globe-like image

This can be done with any camera, and most editing programs, and it is a fun effect! I found the instructions on an Elements board, and I used PSE 6 to create these in about 5 minutes!

 

It can take a not-so-hot photo and turn it into an interesting orb-like image. This was a failure attempt at getting a water drop shot:

A shot of clouds, taken from an airplane:

A sunset silhouette of a couple kissing:

Instructions:

1. Crop your image into a square. You could do a rectangle, but you won't end up with a nice round final image. I have played around with it and found that as long as it is within 50 pixels of square, it still looks OK.

2. From the filters menu, choose Distort -> Polar Coordinates. Choose the "Polar to Rectangular" option and press "OK".

3. Rotate the image 180 degrees.

4. From the filters menu, choose Distort -> Polar Coordinates. Choose the "Rectangular to Polar" option and press "OK".

Voila! You're done!

I found that it almost turns the image inside out. In the example below, the daffodil was centered in the square, and the ruffled petals ended up along the outside of the orb:

And in this one, I had an image of two sandcastles side by side and I made the center of the image in between them:

Have fun! I think this might be fun to try with a city skyline or field of flowers. I tried it on a few faces and it was just freaky, but it did make my kids laugh!