Day 14 - Ink and Water

Written By Martin Newham

The plan when I got up today was to photograph rain - last night the forecast was all full of promise of thunderstorms and heavy rain.

But then the British weather did its thing and all we had were a couple of light showers!

So I decided to go back to the old Lightbox and try out some high speed photography of ink falling into water.

I tried out both the 24-75 mm Sony lens and the 85mm Macro lens that I have and have to say am pretty stoked with the results!

Here was the set up (I have re-staged it as I did not take a picture of it before!)


The set up was simple - A 20 quid light box, a transparent container with a square face (this minimises distortion) and a couple of additional lights bouncing off the sides of the light box to brighten it up even more.

Some really dark black ink and a dropper.

I linked my phone to the camera as a remote trigger and set up for hi continuous shooting, triggered the shutter and dropped in a couple of drops of ink.

I love the results! I have cropped in to remove the noise of the sides of the container and also gone black and white. Apart from that very little editing has gone into this and it produces some interesting shapes in a rather large gallery!

The way that the ink interacts with the water is fascinating - especially that initial droplet that falls and expands into a ring that almost touches the bottom but the hovers there before being engulfed with the main body of the rest of the ink.

The contrast with the black and white works really well here to.

I will definitely be returning to this and soon - the images make some great footage too for small short videos.

Martin Newham
Next

Day 13 - a cloudy paddle