Bubble Drop Tutorial

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1 Bubble Drop Tutorial By: Stephen Cullum - Creative Dragon Photography With the popularity of my most recent DD Many people have been asking how I have captured this moment in time. Well, in order to help out the community and water/bubble drop enthusiasts I have put together this tutorial. I hope it helps you in your endeavors. Before we begin, let me just make one thing clear this is how I do my water drops and splashes You do not necessarily have to do it the same exact way that I do. In fact I encourage you to experiment and try new things Also, my current setup is not the same setup I used to use for some of my older drops even with the electronics involved in this newer setup you still need to know about lighting, the constructs of a splash, aperture, shutter speed, etc That being said, let s get down to it shall we? Equipment Needed SLR or DSLR camera (you need to be able to manually control your aperture and shutter speed) with Macro lens (I use a 105mm Macro F2.8)

2 Tripod A couple of external flashes Baking dish or some other vessel to capture the drops in Some sort of setup to drop the drops Optional Equipment (what I use) Custom made wood frame to drape cloth over or use colored paper as backdrops Colored fabric (easily purchased from a fabric store or craft store) or colored construction paper The Time Machine with Drip Kit ( Xanthan Gum Powder (thickening agent Guar Gum powder works as well, but not as good) Food coloring to add to the water Preparation I use Xanthan Gum powder to make the water being dropped into the catch dish heavier. This produces a larger bounce then regular water would produce. To create the mixture: o Add 1/4 teaspoon of powder to 4 cups of warm water o Blend very, very, very well I usually use a blender

3 Next the mixture needs to be strained, because at this point it is very dirty and opaque o I use paper towels inside of a strainer, which sits on another finer mesh strainer (the bigger fine mesh strainer is a bacon grease guard, usually used for when cooking bacon or deep frying food so that the grease doesn t pop up and splash you in the face) o I usually strain the mixture a couple times Keep in mind that this part is very time consuming usually takes a couple hours.

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5 Once the straining process is done you ll end up with about 2 cups of usable liquid I usually thin this out a bit by adding 2 more cups of regular water to the mixture Now it s time for a look at the setup:

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7 Let the Fun Begin OK, so we re all setup, we have some sort of drop rig, let s start dropping The first thing you need to do is get your timing down. You need to be able to produce a splash that looks similar to this: This produced by the bounce (column of water coming up from the first drop colliding with the surface) impacting with a second drop. In case you want specifics, my current settings for my camera and Time Machine are as follows: Camera: F11, 3/4 second shutter speed Time Machine: Drip rate of.30, Drop size.106, Flash lag.348 If you re not using a time machine then you need a drop rate of about 10 drops a second and you need to be able to control that in some way before I had my Time Machine I did this manually with fish tank hose, and a water valve that I attached to the end I also used a water bottle (upside down) as my reservoir for my drop water The same results can be achieved manually just as they can with the time machine. With either method you still have to dial in your settings which of course can be very frustrating at times Anyhow, after you are able to produce a splash consistently similar to the one above then it s time to add a bubble to the mix for the bubbles I m just using regular store bought bubble solution that kids would play with:

8 Get some solution on the bubble wand and blow a bubble onto the surface of the water try to not make a very big bubble, otherwise the bubble will not be completely in the frame of the image

9 Now position the bubble where the drops are landing and then drop your drops (Note: I either blow on the bubble to move it, or get my finger wet and kind of flick/push the bubble where I want it to go ). Obviously this is going to take time, practice, lots of patience, and a good amount of experimentation Even if you are using the Time Machine, don t expect to get GREAT results right away It took me a good month of practicing and playing with flash lag, drop size, and drop rates before I was finally able to hone my skills to get good drops I still haven t achieved perfection, and I m always trying new things One other note, in regards to focusing for your drops use F11 to give yourself a good DoF, and ISO of depending on how much light you re using (I have my flashes at 1/16 th power) Here is a trick on focusing where the drops will land: I m using a metal skewer laid out across the baking dish I keep dropping drops until they are landing on the skewer then I use auto focus to focus in on the skewer once I m focused I turn auto focus off

10 Well, I hope this tutorial has been of some use to you. Keep dropping those drops, but most importantly, just have fun with it Here are a few images I caught during the production of this tutorial Enjoy!

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13 And as always, for prints of my work go to Happy Dropping! ~Stephen Creative Dragon Photography