crazy experiments

I promised to share some of my crazy experiments, so here goes. I'm obsessed with lighting, as all photographers should be. I love to see the behind-the-scenes setup on where the lights are placed, modified... This book Light: Science and Magic especially appealed to the scientist in me. The authors not only talk about how light behaves, they also demonstrate how light interacts with different materials, like metal, glass, skin, etc etc. Glass is especially a tough one, because it is reflective and transparent at the same time. The trick, as it turns out, is to light it from behind, either white with black edges, or black with white edges.

In this first example of stemware, I covered the center of a rectangular softbox, leaving two vertical strips of light just outside of camera's view. The light illuminated the edges of the glasses, leaving the middle largely black, so the shape of the glasses were accentuated. The granite counter top in my kitchen studio provided some nice reflections.

If I use the softbox as is, I'll get a white background and white glass with black edges. But that's all static and boring. How about let's fill the glass with water, and drop stuff in it so we can see some action?

Entered Jelly Belly. Except that we had a hard time producing any splashes. Turned out that the smooth exterior made the entry super easy, like a champion Olympic diver, producing very little splash. So we fished the jellybean out and kept trying. Aha! As the surface dissolved in water, it became rougher and slowed down the dive while producing interesting columns of air, bubbles and splashes. Totally grin producing.

We (me and the kids) then thought, hmm, what else can we put it the water? What about food coloring?? Took out the liquid food coloring only to find it nearly dried up. All the better because it had to dissolve in water and produced really, really interesting patterns. And a permanent grin.

See, gravity!!