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Various Nature Galleries

Other Bites o' Nature

92 photos

Updated: Mar 14, 2010 12:26am PST

Chinese & Japanese Gardens

A work in progress... These are mostly from the Portland Chinese and ...

Updated: Mar 12, 2010 6:18pm PST

Landscapes

64 photos

Updated: Mar 11, 2010 1:41pm PST

Fall -- My Favorite Time of Year

107 photos

Updated: Feb 19, 2010 7:54pm PST

$Water Drops : (New and improved instructions 2/1/10) Many of you have asked how I got my droplet refraction shots. Two of favorite resources are from SteveTookIt and some discussion threads on Flickr. I wanted something to shoot on a rainy day, so I set out to figure out how to do this cheaply indoors. I use a Canon 50D, a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and a Speedlite 430EX II flash, plus a tripod. I made a large lightbox out of 4 pieces of 4x8’ Styrofoam insulation from Home Depot, $7 each. I cut them in half and masking-taped them together, making a 4x4’ box in which I could set up a small folding table. I added a lamp from my family room (positioning carefully so it doesn’t reflect in the wrong places in the drops, obscuring the refraction). Method A: After using Method B for a while I recruited my husband to help me figure out a better system. Method B works, but I was always struggling to keep storage containers out of my refractions! So he helped me cut and bend a couple of wire coat hangers. With masking tape I attached hanger #1 to the back edge of the folding table, looking something like the hangman drawing. It stands about a foot tall, and the top bends towards me across the top of the table. I attach the background flower to it (masking tape works fine), facing towards me. I set hanger #2 (also bent hangman fashion) in a tall transparent vase and tape a flower or stem to it. I spray water on flower/stem #2 and move it around in front of #1 till I get a refraction that pleases me (usually about 1-4 inches in front of #1). I sometimes have to stack the vase on storage containers to get the refraction right. Method B: I used a variety of different heights of food storage containers from my cupboard to clip the flowers to and get the heights I wanted. With chip clips I clipped the stem of the flowers to the storage containers. You have to be careful what surrounds the background flower, as everything reflects in your water drop. Find a stem or flower that the drops don’t immediately fall off. Rose stems work well. Try spraying water on different things and see if the drops adhere. Spray the water lightly, adding a little at a time, or the drops fall off too quickly. Think up a nice composition, flower #1 looming large in the background, nice colors, thinking of the rule of thirds, etc. Experiment with f/stop so that the flower in back is rather blurred (f/7-f/20), yet you get detail in the refraction. Everything affects a small image like this, so play with light, light meter, etc. I sometimes had to clone out some light reflected in the waterdrop in Photoshop. Feel free to email me (link on my home page) if you have any questions. I’m by no means an expert, but I’m having fun with this!$