Green chaos
A drop of food colour in water to represent motion and chaos.
A drop of food colour in water to represent motion and chaos.
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Oct, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I was visiting my parents at the time, and this photo was taken in my parents very charming laundry room. The room doesn't have any windows and it can be closed off so that it is pitch black, which is just what I wanted for this shot.Time
I am one of those people that is most creative late at night, and it wasn't any different with this idea. I think I might have shot for one ore two hours around midnight.Lighting
I don't own any kind of fancy equipment, so I had to get really creative with some things I found around the house. I wanted a bright background with a slight gradient towards the perimeter of the shot. For the lighting, I therefore balanced some baking paper up against two spray cans and placed a flash light behind the paper. This gave me a very nice diffuse light background with a slight contrast zone of light directly behind the glass of water. I turned off all other lights in the room so that the flash-light was the only source of light.Equipment
At the time I didn't own a tripod, and as I mentioned before, I don't own any other fancy equipment. It was just me and the camera. To get the camera angle right I placed it on top of a stack of books, and elevated my light source in a similar way.Inspiration
I love images with interesting displays of colour. At the time I had recently seen some images from a colour festival in India. The extraordinary colours, as well as the chaos and motion, inspired me to make a shot where one or more colours would stand out and be the focus of the shot and somehow display this same motion of chaos. Food-colour in water seemed like a less messy alternative to the full blown colour-bomb war seen at the Indian colour festival.Editing
My focus was adjusted manually to where the drop of food-colour landed in the water, and because my light source was placed directly behind the twirling cloud of colour, it automatically created the gradient of light that I wanted in the shot. What you see, is as the photo was shot.In my camera bag
Although this photo was shot with a Canon 400D, which I was borrowing at the time, I always carry around my Nikon D3100. My current lens is an AF-S DX Nikon Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 ED VR which is quite good for many different types of photography, although I mostly use the 18-55mm range. Usually I also carry my very handy Velbon UT-43Q tripod and my Hahnel HRN280 shutter remote.Feedback
My biggest advice would be to not get caught up in the idea that you have to own expensive equipment to make good shots. For a shot like this, it's most important to allow yourself to be creative. Try to find interesting or fun objects around the house that you can experiment with. My photo includes nothing more than an interesting looking glass filled with water, a drop of food-colour, baking paper and a flash light.
