Daybreak - With a wine glass

[Manfred M]

I'm trying something a bit different.

Water dripping into a wine glass. Instead of having the lights side-by-side, I stacked them vertically. Blue gel on the top and the yellow on the bottom. A little like the end of blue hour - deep, saturated sky and yellow sunlight just coming up from below the horizon.

[mugge]

I think that the blue colour is much too dominant. The yellow colour is 'wrong' in the shadows to my mind.
Cheers Ole

[Manfred M]

I think that the blue colour is much too dominant. The yellow colour is 'wrong' in the shadows to my mind.
Cheers Ole

These images are primarily experiments I am working on. The falling water is one aspect that I am exploring and the lighting is another.

As blue and yellow are complementary colours, they work to cancel each other out where they overlap. As the colour filters not are not "pure" the effect is not perfect. If they were, there would be areas of pure monochromatic gray where the intensities meet and overlap. As there is a slight magenta colour direction in those areas (rather than a pure gray), that is what shows up; colour theory does work.

The other area I am exploring with the colours is trying to position the lights to get the gradients to come up with some interesting blends. In this shot, my bottom light (which I control with barn doors) was set to be most intense at the bottom of the scene, so that part of the experiment worked too. I also used a 2-stop silk to variably cut the light so that the area closest to the white plexiglas is not too "hot"; a problem I had in some of my previous work.

Here is a different take of the same setup, using an analogous colour scheme (yellow and orange), with the upper light in the same place, but the lower light tilted up more and more heavily flagged (using the barn doors) along the bottom. A somewhat different effect.

I also like the minor differences in the two images, where the water splashes up from the bottom of the glass. Unfortunately, that part is the most difficult to control and I was not able to get any repeatability in this aspect of the shot.

[royent]

Manfred I much prefer the blue one
Roy

[mugge]

I can see where you are going now. The second image is warmer due to the orange colour. I think the droplets in the first image is better controlled than the second one.

Maybe it's the colour but the upper orange in the second image is less intense than in the first image, I prefer the softer look in the second image.

How are you going to make the droplets falling better looking? Slightly elongated, perhaps?
Cheers Ole

[Manfred M]

I can see where you are going now. The second image is warmer due to the orange colour. I think the droplets in the first image is better controlled than the second one.

Maybe it's the colour but the upper orange in the second image is less intense than in the first image, I prefer the softer look in the second image.

How are you going to make the droplets falling better looking? Slightly elongated, perhaps?
Cheers Ole

Unfortunately the one thing that is impossible to control precisely is the shape, spacing and quantity of the falling drops. Drops that fall are actually rounded at the top and flattened on the bottom, if they are controlled precisely.

The classic drop shape we are used to seeing only forms before a drop starts falling. This is how falling drops eventually end up looking like.

[mugge]

Unfortunately the one thing that is impossible to control precisely is the shape, spacing and quantity of the falling drops. Drops that fall are actually rounded at the top and flattened on the bottom, if they are controlled precisely.

The classic drop shape we are used to seeing only forms before a drop starts falling. This is how falling drops eventually end up looking like.

Would changing the viscosity of water help, say by using salt or sugar?

[Manfred M]

Would changing the viscosity of water help, say by using salt or sugar?

Adding salt or sugar will make minor and effectively not noticeable changes to the viscosity of water. The equipment I use is designed to use water, at room temperature. I would hesitate to use anything else that could clog it up.

I would have to start using much more viscous liquids - heavy oil, honey, etc to try something with radically different flow dynamics.

I have looked at using other clear liquids with a higher index of refraction than water in some of my other work and have tried working with glycerine, but have not found it really make enough difference in the final product for people to notice it.

[pschlute]

You had me at the title !