How to shoot “The Water Drop”

I’ve seen these types of shots all over the place and thought it was about time to sit down and just figure out how to do one myself.  The water drop shot can be a pretty simple shot if you want it to be or you can make it very complex for some cool looks.  Today I’m going to show you how to set up a pretty simple scenario, you’ll need a glass container, a flash or really bright shooting location, water, a tripod, and your camera.  You can always add more to this setup but this is the minimum you’ll need.

Ok so lets dig a little deeper into what you need to make this shoot happen -

• Glass container – I used a big punch bowl for my container but this is not ideal, if you have it you should try using a fish tank where you can shoot straight on and eliminate glare and reflections.
• Flash – You need to light the water drops and get them to stop the motion, you can do this easily with a flash but if you just have a bright area that will work too.  I also used wireless flash sync’s here to allow me to move the flash off camera but this is not a requirement.
• Camera – Any camera that has a telephoto or macro lens should work here.
• Water – You’ll need to fill the container with water and if you want to show water dropping into water you’ll need  another container of water as well.

The setup for these shots is simple but lets walk through it -

• Fill the container about half way with water
• Decide upon the background, move the container to where you’ll get that background.
• Set up your camera on a tripod
• Stick an item in the middle of the water and use that to manually focus the camera, you won’t have time to focus when your trying to catch the action.
• Get your flash ready, test it out a few times to get it right where you don’t have glare or bad reflections. I bounced my flash off the ceiling to soften the light a little but your milage may vary.
• Pour or drop stuff into the water and time your shutter release to the time of the drop. This may take some time to get it right, just keep playing until you get it.

You have some options here when you want to make your shot different, you could try adding a background and/or move the background away from the container and add a light to the background to make it really pop.

As you can see from the pics I shot water pouring into water, dropped broccoli and dropped tomato’s into the water. The options here are endless, I’ve seen some pretty cool options with strawberries, cut kiwi’s and other fruit. One other thing I’ve found is that larger items seem to have a better splash and more bubbles under the water use a bigger item or drop it from further, just make sure your ok with the mess.

Additional Images -

Let me know what you think of these shots and if you plan to take any of your own in the comments below.

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Tagged as: still life, studio, water