My Portfolio
Read below for details on the various types of Macro Photography I focus on. Each category has a link to albums in my gallery.
Water Droplet Collision Photography
These images are made by carefully arranging for two or more drops to be released in rapid succession. After the first drop hits the water, it creates a vertical plume, at which point the second drop crashes into the rising column from the first drop. This results in a variety of fantastic shapes, which can be varied by changing the size of the drops, as well as the time delay between drops, and the delay before the camera shutter is fired. In this way, different stages of the collision can be photographed.
I use a timing valve called the Splash Water Drop Kit made by Miops to release the drops, a pair of wireless flashes, and a 1:1 macro lens. To create different color schemes, I put food coloring in the water, and prop up a vertical square of colored vinyl in the background. By using contrasting colors for the water and the background, beautiful color combinations can be achieved.
Droplet Refraction Photography
When the camera is focused in just the right way on droplets clinging to plants or flowers, they act as tiny lenses, showing colors and patterns of what is behind them. Despite the fact that these might look like pictures taken outdoors, it is far more effective to photograph these indoors, where a controlled setup can be arranged. I typically purchase a bouquet of flowers and set a tiny scene up inside my apartment.
First, I find a stem or flower petal upon which to place some droplets. This is the hardest part, because many surfaces are too slippery for the droplets to cling for very long. Sometimes I mist drops using a water bottle; other times, I use a syringe to meticulously place glycerin drops in specific spots. Glycerin is a little thicker than water, making it possible to place larger drops. Round drops work much better as lenses than distorted ones. After placing the drops, I place a colorful flower behind them, so it refracts through them, resulting in gorgeous patterns.
Soap Bubble Photography
Truly psychedelic swirls of color dance around the surface of soap bubbles, but they can only be seen when the light hits them just right. As the soap and water mixture moves around, it causes variations in the thickness of the bubble wall, which in turn causes light to be refracted in shifting prismatic patterns. Bubbles tend to pop quickly, which can make it almost impossible to focus on them before it's too late. By adding some corn syrup to the soap and water mixture, I am able to thicken them, so they don't pop quite so rapidly.
I like to photograph the interior "facets" formed within a cluster of bubbles blown into a container: the boundaries where bubbles meet create squares, pentagons, hexagons, and other odd shapes. In addition, sometimes the adjacent bubble facets will show reflections of the main facet, or play with the light source in other beautiful ways. I get the best results using an RGB panel light to illuminate the bubble clusters.
Snowflake Photography
Macro Photography in general is difficult, requiring a great deal of patience. Snowflakes are the most challenging of all, because they are much smaller than other subjects. An ordinary macro lens will not usually suffice. I use an Ultra Macro lens from Laowa with up to five times the magnification of an ordinary macro lens. That being said, when you are focusing on something that small, the tiniest movement of the camera will shift the snowflake completely out of focus. The depth of field is razor thin, making it physically impossible to get the entire snowflake in focus unless it's perfectly perpendicular to the camera. And even then, sometimes parts are out of focus, as the snowflake can be thicker than the plane of focus, resulting in some details appearing blurry. In some cases, this can make the pictures more interesting, emphasizing certain subtle details.
Depending on lighting conditions, sometimes I will set the camera to burst mode, then move the camera slightly forward and backward while holding down the shutter. If I can get multiple photos where each one has a different part of the snowflake in focus, I can combine them in post-production using a technique called Focus Stacking, where the software will build a single image by combining the sharpest parts of each image in the series.