E Schosso Photography

Well it's the middle of the week and as I was browsing my emails this evening a YouTube video popped up on how to photography water drops. So lacking anything better to do I fired it up and watched 3 different photographers explain how they photographed water drops. Of course each has a different way to do it, but the basic theme is have a bowl at least half full of water sitting in a cookie sheet or some other large container to help catch any exuberant water that deems to exit your bowl. One off the camera flash set on a low power setting (suggested 1/16 power, which seemed to work fine for me), wireless trigger for camera and flash and of course a bag of water suspended above your bowl. Poke a hole in the bottom corner of the bag and watch the drops descend into your bowl. They will drop at a steady pace and in the same spot (as long as you don't do something dumb-Like Me- and bump the bag). Put a knife in the center of the area the drops are falling in and focus the camera. Switch to manual if you were using auto focus as the camera will keep trying to auto focus on the drops as they fall. I used my Canon 6D at 100iso, 35mm 1/200 at f/10. Bounce the flash off of a white surface (I used 24"x36" coated foam board), not directly at the water. Once you are sure you have good focus and exposure you can experiment with colors. First change your WB to Tungsten to get a nice blue hue to the water in the bowl and the drops. You can add different color paper behind the bowl to get more color in the water. You can also add food color to the water. The biggest challenge is TIMING the drops.
So my boring evening turned into a very fun and enjoyable evening of photographing falling water drops.

Of the video's I watched First Man Photography was the best. Check out some of his double (mushroom) drops at the end of his video.
http://www.firstmanphotography.com/tutorials/water-drop-photography

Here are a few samples of what I did tonight.