Fun With Water

As I’ve mentioned before, I am determined to master this camera setting thing (what ISO, shutter speed and aperture to use) so I can have more creative control over my images. The only way to master anything is with practice, practice and more practice.

As I am learning, my primary goal isn’t just to get fabulous images, although I certainly would not delete any grand images that just sort of happened. My goal is to take lots of shots at a wide variety of settings to see which ones turn out the best.

Since we were at the WV place in the dead of winter, interesting subject matter is sort of limited. Actually, I should qualify that by saying subject matter that most normal, look-at-a-snapshot types would find interesting is what’s limited. People, flowers, landscapes, etc.

So I had to improvise. One thing that was definitely in abundance was water. Saturday was all about snow melting. Sunday was all about rain and fog. Lucky for me, I decided to experiment on Saturday. I was inspired by one of my Flickr contacts, Michelle in NY, who does amazing stuff with liquids and macro photography. (NOTE: I am not sure if those links will work for just anyone. Some Flickr people restrict image access to people they have identified as contacts. If either link does not work, please let me know.)

My attempts are nowhere near as creative as Michelle’s, but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing I did, without a tripod. I REALLY need to make a habit of carrying one of those things along.

“Shattered Silence” was actually cropped from a larger image. I thought a close-up of this particular drip made for a more-powerful image. I have posted the original below. I can’t really call it the SOOC version, because I did make some adjustments to color, amount of light, sharpness, etc.

See what I mean? All the action sort of gets lost. The bigger picture isn’t interesting at all to me.

This looks like the mouth of a large-mouth bass to me. Or maybe even a large bullfrog. I’m going with the fish, though, because that came to mind first. “Gulp” was also cropped from a larger image.

“In and Out” was also cropped, but not nearly as much. The more I looked at these drips through the lens, the more I realized closer was better.

You may also notice some color variation between the cropped and bigger versions. I tweaked the lighting a bit differently for the cropped version.

The title for this one alludes to the fact that I think it looks like an exploding eyeball. I’m not trying to say this is eye-poppingly good photography. Although this is my favorite drip shot.

Here’s something different for your viewing pleasure… a series of shots.

I’m sorry if my titles are a bot hokey. I consider them a necessary evil. If I don’t add a caption, then I don’t get that cool, almost-invisible frame around the image I am posting. And I really like the frame.

So, just ignore the hokey titles, okay?

You have just seen seven of my drip shots. Any idea how many shots it took to get those seven images? I am not sure of the exact number, but it was close to 80. Yes, 80. See what I mean about practice?