“Action Shot” – Schweinfurt, Germany – Markus Reugels – Featured Photographer

.

.

“Action Shot” – Schweinfurt, Germany – Markus Reugels – Featured Photographer

I have always found drop photography fascinating.  It is simply liquid art at its finest. Every shot brings out something new and creative and never seen before.  Like a snowflake or finger print only created once and then forever lost.  Markus has taken this to an entirely different level.  I bet you are wondering how he did this!  Well you came to the right place because here at www.photobotos.com we talk about the magic behind the photograph which is more often than not just as interesting. 

Head on over to Markus’s website http://500px.com/MarkusReugels  to see more amazing drop shots and see how he fits the entire earth into a single drop of water.  http://500px.com/photo/4739840   All of these photos are even more amazing when you realize he doesn’t use Adobe Photoshop to make the amazing drops.

Here is Markus:

The Basic “Drop on Drop” technique works with 2 drops. The First drop fall into the Water and formed a crater, then a crown and finally the Pillar . The second drop must be timed that he land on the Pillar and with the collision he formed the shapes like.  Mushrooms, hats or flying disc.  When the distance between the first and the second drop gets bigger, the shapes goes into flying disc.  When the Distance gets lower, the shapes turns more into hats. The middle Drop speed is about 10 drops per second (here are the Mushrooms). With 15 drops per second comes the flying shapes and with 6 drops per second the hats.

To get smooth shapes with less sprinkle around them, I increase the viscosity with guar gum.  This will help a lot.  It´s more work to mix the Water and filter the grain out, but the results worth the Work.  A very Important thing in this genre is the light.  I take lots of care into this. Before I start dropping, I set the Light perfect.  A good shape looks poor in nasty light. So take care about it!

Normally I thicken my drop Water with Guargum to increase the viscosity. I Want a similar Viscosity as Milk or Cream.  This helps to make smoother shapes and they hold longer together before they collapse.  Sometimes I use only Milk, this is the best fluid for the droplets, You can bring Color into the Splash without coloring the Water. With milk you can bring color into the splash with the light, so you must only use gels on the flashes.

I use a Sony @700 with a Minolta 100 f2.8 Macro lens.  As Flashes I use only the Old Vivitar 285 with a little modification to set the Power lower than 1/16.  As timing Device I use a Homebrew Unit called GlimpseCatcher.  With these I can time all events exactly on one point.

As Aperture is use F16, this is the best compromise between sharpness and diffraction blur. The Shutter speed is not important in the Highspeed Photography, the Action is freeze by the flashes.  The Flashes have a flash duration fasten than 1/16000 at low power settings.  No Camera has a shutter fast as the Flashes. I chose as Shutter speed 1/160 , but only for the Wireless trigger it Work best with these settings!  As ISO a choose between 160-320, it depends on how dark gels I use or what type of lighting.