First Dance - a photo on Flickriver

First Dance

This image represents a few hours of experimenting to try and create something worth photographing, as is often the same with water droplet refraction photography. I used some fun new tools to do this, too!

First off, the “behind-the-scenes” image illustrates everything pretty well: donkom.ca/bts/_1090402.jpg . I’m using a Platypod Max with some gooseneck arms and a couple of Litra torches for all of the lighting here, which you can currently get all together as a bundle from Platypod as part of their Black Friday special: platypod.com/black-friday-2019

I cannot recall where I got the black porcelain container, but I know previously I’ve found bowls at thrift stores that work: you need it a couple inches deep with a relatively flat bottom, because under the water you’ll place a “third hand tool” that clamps the foreground object – in this case, a Dandelion seed. The clamp doesn’t have to be very far submerged, so long as no light falls on it and the camera is perpendicular to the surface of the water, the reflection will overpower it.

The Camera and lens is the Lumix S1R with the 24-105mm F/4 kit lens, a great combination for macro when paired with the “high-resolution” mode. This mode allows for the camera to quadruple its resolution by taking multiple photos and slightly shifting the sensor between each shot to really amplify your details, which indirectly overcomes a problem in macro photography: depth of field. I don’t need a 187MP image, but I can shoot an image with such detail with the intension of throwing most of it away via cropping. I only really need a 20MP image, which is what I’ve got here! Getting farther away from your subject gives you more depth, so the best part of this? No focus stacking required. This is just a single frame.

I love the gooseneck arms which are so much easier to position for shots like this than a flash or even a continuous light on a tabletop tripod; you can get the slight very close and accurately placed to the subject. This is important, because the light is not hitting the Dandelion seeds, it’s just hitting the background!

Simple ingredients at play, and we have some fun results. Originally I was going to use three seeds, but two just felt better, like two people dancing. It’s difficult to anthropomorphize water droplets, but I think this comes close!

If you haven’t seen my new macro book, it’ll be out in Q1 2020 and can be pre-ordered here: skycrystals.ca/product/pre-order-macro-photography-the-un...

Taken on: January 28, 2019

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Camera: Panasonic DC-S1R, f/14.0, 1/80 sec, 105mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Panasonic DC-S1R
Lens:	LUMIX S 24-105/F4
Aperture:	f/14.0
Exposure Time:	0.013 sec (1/80)
Focal Length:	105mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	-1 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 21.0 (Windows)
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