July 4th on The Hudson

Happy belated Independence Day!  I was really excited to go down to the river to do some photography, because this would be my first time shooting fireworks with the lens I bought last summer, a Canon 24-105mm f4.  A few friends and I went down to The Hudson River and sat on the rocks right next to the water.  My butt was so sore after, because I chose to sit on a sharp rock… but it was all in the name of photography!  I had a great front row seat.

Besides getting the traditional fireworks shot, I wanted to experiment with something I saw a photographer do a little while ago.  His name is David Johnson and while he was doing his long exposures he would throw the focus while the fireworks were going off.  It creates a really cool effect.  I saw his work featured on an art blog called This Is Colossal.

Little Drops of Water

A little while ago, I was experimenting with water drop photography.  I’ve always been fascinated by the shapes and colors that the photographers were able to capture.  My very first attempts were…..a bit of a disappointment, I didn’t own a flash at that time, so I had to make due with clamp lights, high iso, and low aperture.  It wasn’t the most ideal setting.  I decided to wait until I could save up for a flash, because doing it without one is just too frustrating.  A couple months later, I finally got my first flash for my birthday, a canon 430 ex ii.

So I set up my bootleg studio again in an attempt to capture the elusive water droplets!  Not too bad if I do say so myself.

I first tried shooting on an all white background, and while I think it’s very pretty, I got bored of it very quick.  I wanted the striking colors and patterns of the awesome photos I saw everyday on the internet.  So I hung a polka dot scarf behind the water and slipped a small mirror underneath the container and ended up this:

I was ecstatic when I first saw this.  Oh and in case you’re wondering why I added the mirror, I wanted to get the water drop’s reflection in the photo.

After experimenting with this setup a bit (as well as using other scarves with different colors/patterns) I began to set up little scenes to shoot the drops.  These are pretty abstract, simple scenes, but I have to start somewhere right?

I love the idea of creating a surreal world around these water drops.  They have such interesting forms and shapes, they almost look like aliens!  I plan on experimenting with these more, as well as working on building skills to construct miniature worlds for these drops to be in.  I even tried dropping multiple drops at once, but it was hard to get the timing right.

If you’d like to see of of my favorite water drop photographers, click here to check out his site.  HIs site is in German and the photos are pretty small, so if you don’t want to deal with that, you can check out this blog that features his work by clicking here.