Water Figure Tutorial

Due to the overwhelming response I got on Flickr and several e-mail requests, I’m going to divulge how the above shot was taken.

Quick Summary:  A few drops of paint on a balloon covered speaker, while the speaker played a 120Hz tone.  The photo was taken using speed photography techniques, which includes a dark room, long shutter time, shot flash duration, and a sound trigger set at about 70 milliseconds.

Full Details:
First, you need a speaker.  It doesn’t need to be a big speaker.  In fact, for this shot, I just used the small hole (about 2-3 inches wide) that was in the side of my speaker.

Second, you’ll need to cover the speaker, with some rubber.  I couldn’t thing of anything else, so I ended up snipping of the end of a balloon and stretching that over the speaker.  Make sure it’s flat and stretch tight.  Alternately, I think a garbage bag might work too, but don’t quote me on that.

Next, you’ll need a sound generator.  If your stereo has auxilary inputs, you can hook up your computer or laptop to it (headphone out to aux in).  Download a program called Multisine…this will be your sound generator.  Multisine is a small, easy to use program that will create a sound wave at any frequency.  To create a sine wave, just click Generator, Sine, enter a frequency (120 worked for me), and voltage (1 is fine), and then press “Ok” (not add sine…this will only lead to headaches).  Then press Play to hear the tone.

Ok, we’ve got the speaker ready, a sound to play through the speaker…now we just need to set up the photography equipment :)

I used two flashes, my trusty 580exII and 430exII for this shoot.  I wanted plenty of light, and very few shadows.  They were placed at the 4 and 7 o’clock position, both set at about 1/16 power.  The power rating is important!  This determines how long the flash duration will be, and you want a short flash duration (lower power, shorter duration) to capture the motion.  In truth, I wanted to drop the power to 1/32, but then I’d have to lower the f-stop on the camera and I’d lose some DOF.  Macro speed photography is always a balance of DOF and amount of light.

Attached to the flashes is my sound trigger.  I’ve talked about this a few times in my blog before, but I’ll mention it again.  A sound trigger is basically a device that triggers the flash whenever a loud sound is heard.  Hiviz sells a basic sound trigger that works okay, but the Stop Shot is a much nicer unit.  Built into both of these units is a delay circuit, so that the flash fires shortly after the sound is heard, instead of immediately.  For this shot, I set the delay to approximately 70 milliseconds.

This shot could probably be done without the sound trigger, but it’d be hard.  You’re basically trying to time the moment shortly after the sound occurs.  Too soon an you won’t see anything.  Too late and you won’t see anything either.  The entire event lasts less than .1 seconds.

Okay, so now you’ve got your flashes set up, you camera on a tripod (oh yeah, I skipped that step), and you’re ready to shoot.  Drop a few drops of paint near the center of the speaker.  For the above shot I used about 18-24 drops of paint, 3-4 drops of each color.  Set your camera to 1”, f14 (for a large DOF), ISO100.  Turn the lights down (to prevent motion blur), open the shutter, play the sound.

Here’s the tricky part (and about now you’re saying, “Are you kidding?”)…your volume, frequency, and density (how much water is in your paint) will play a big role in how your photo will look.  To low of volume, and your paint won’t move.  To high, and it flies right off the speaker (that looks pretty cool too).  Density matters too.  Too watery and it’ll separate too easily.  Too dense, and it won’t move.  Finding a balance between all these factors is tough, and takes a little trial and error.

Bored yet?  Did I scare you all with details?  Sorry if this was too much, but I wanted you guys to have as much information as possible if you wanted to create something similar.  In truth, this photo was the result of about 4 hours of playing around.  Preparing the speaker, setting up the camera, getting the paint ready, and shooting about 20-30 shots.

If you have any questions, please ask them in comments.  I’ll try to answer any and all questions within a day or two.  And for those that wondered, no, it was not Britney Spears that was playing in the speaker, though that would explain why the paint was trying to get away.

And as a final note, have fun with this!  It’s a little work to get set up, but every shot is different.  Try different liquids.  Try oil.  Try water.  Or try a little food coloring mixed with cream: