You lot blew me away with your response to my previous upload 'The Cheeky Boy', thank you so, so much, especially given that portraiture can be very personal. Additional thanks go to Peter [ddolfelin], Mark[tc], Ron [Rontear], Rob [RLF], Brian [Brian17302], Karen [Kaz1], Dave [Daveswork], Irene [Ireneclarke], Richard [Dickspics], and certainly not least Ernie [DevilsAdvocate].

So, back to the frustrations of water droplets; I hope I have taken on board the advice given previously, thank you very much. These examples have addatives in the water, but I haven't yet got the viscosity right, hey, give me a break I'm a busy girl at the minute

The consequences of incorrect viscosity include, not generating the desired height, because the liquid is too dense and also not achieving the appropriate collisions; however, I have changed a couple of things as follows:

Changed the position of the flash units so that the light was bouncing more off the back wall and also used tissue paper rather than gels to introduce colour, much prefer the tissue paper to the gels; also bounced flash from the ceiling, which did not have any tissue paper adornment, because I wasn't getting enough light on the water.

While, I have changed the position of the camera which may have improved things, I think it still needs to be raised in order to achieve the optimum reflections, not sure if, raising it slightly higher than I think it needs to go and then tilting it slightly forward would result in better reflections that include more of the reflection [or just buy a bigger bowl], something to be practiced next time.

I appreciate that I need to get rid of the band at the back which of course is the edge of the dish by increasing the amount of water and when I find an area in my house that is level, or devise a system to level the bowl [house built on a hill, nothing is absolutely level] I hope to resolve that issue.

As you can see from the EXIF I also used a different lens, which I think helped; I have included a link to the previous upload for critique for comparison.
https://www.ephotozine.com/user/tish1-227006/gallery/photo/absolute-frustration-49658912

The versions are included, only because they illustrate that initially the images lacked lustre and I was looking for a way to correct this, the processing in the versions is crap. I processed the image through Nik Collection and used the HDR filter, which made all the difference.

While, some of the water appears to be well focused other parts are not; this would suggest to me that there may be a problem with the flash since the shutter speed is fast enough to freeze action; and there does seem to be an issue with my flash units that I can't explain, you of course may have the answer........ After a short period of use, they decided to illustrate the gratitude by putting on an impromptu light display, even when the main flash was turned off. It wasn't the batteries because I changed them, to no avail, it was like Blackpool illuminations, infact better.

So, the question is, how much have I got right, in making the changes have I made somethings worse and, what do I need to do now in order to achieve perfection, not much of a question really

Thank you

Tish

Tags: Critique General Water droplets Water Collisions