This section contains water droplet collision photography. My exploration into the close-up world of macro photography during the lockdown of 2020 came to an end as Autumn turned to Winter. Whilst there are some wonderful photographs to be created in the Winter I have never enjoyed the cold so I needed to bring my work indoors. My solution was to begin an exploration into the macro world of water droplet collisions.
These water droplet collisions are created by capturing the complex effects resulting from just one or two droplets of liquid falling from above into a container of liquid or by firing a jet of fluid from below to meet a drop falling from above.
Up to six flashguns arranged around the container are set to a very short duration (about 1/250,000 of a second) and are synchronised to freeze the action at exactly the right moment.
Image Gallery – Two Droplets from Above
This is a macro-world where a microsecond difference in time can radically alter the appearance of an image; a world where the tiniest variables create huge differences and chaos has an immense visible effect.
Imagine the number of droplets involved and complexity of shapes involved when you next run the taps into your bath.
Image Gallery – Two Droplets and Water Tray
Apart from a few images that have been reflected about an axis of symmetry there is no ‘Photoshop trickery’ involved. If our unaided eyes could freeze such a short moment in time these images would be exactly what we would see.
The colours are created by adding dye to the liquids and gels to the flashguns, even the ‘star-field’ background was achieved with particles floating in the container of fluid.
Image Gallery – Shoot From Below Collisions
Combinations of water with thickeners such as Xanthan gum and fat emulsions such as milk create different opacities and shapes while variations of drop size and height together with time intervals and delays create further possibilities.
Yet even when all the variables under the control of the explorer in this micro-world appear to have been precisely duplicated, no two images are ever the same. Chaos intervenes and each image becomes unique. Sometimes the differences are subtle but often they are significant, even radical in their variety.
Image Gallery – Reflections
These images serve to remind us not only of the near infinity of minute beauty that surrounds us, usually unnoticed, at every fraction of every moment but also the ultimately uncontrollable effect of chaos upon our lives.
My early water droplet collision images were created using The VersaTrigger Splash (www.versatrigger.co.uk) with many thanks to Richard at VersaTrigger for all his help and assistance.
My more recent images were created using the DropController v4 www.dropcontroller.com. My thanks to Martyn for creating an easy to use and accurate system and for all his fantastic support and help.