The Art of Splashes by Corrie White

Enter a world of blue mushrooms, blown-glass statuettes, mysterious creatures, playful shapes reminiscent of spinning tops, bells, hats, aliens, carousels, limited only by the imagination.

A world of fascinating shapes carved from drops of water or milk caught in time by a brief flash of light.

Enter the water drop world of Corrie White.

Splash! Droplets of water and milk photographed by Corrie White using a macro lens.

These images have caused a splash – they capture the moment when a tiny droplet of milk hits water. Photographer Corrie White from Ontario, Canada, spends hours firing the coloured droplets at the water from a pipette suspended 12 inches.

Corrie, 61, uses milk because it falls more slowly than water, giving her more time to get a snap of that perfect moment. Both the milk and the water in which it lands are tinted with food colouring to give the spectacular effect.

Corrie said she uses one external flash which and sets the flash exposure compensation to a very low power. She said she sets the camera to a low aperture to achieve the depth of field in the pictures. She sets her camera on a five second timer and then releases the droplet. She added: “I have a good sense of timing but sometimes the drop happens so fast that I miss it. Milliseconds make the difference. My success rate is about one out of every 25 attempts on average”.

Humble Beginnings for Water drops

Since I have to send so many Flickr mails about how I do drops, this should explain one of the methods I use. There are many different setups for these drops; this one produces the colored ones as seen below.
Takes only a minute or so to put up and take down again. Easy cleanup afterwards. Not very complicated but it does the job. Without all the electronics, it probably takes more shots this way, but worth the end result.
I do these manually with a medicine dropper which must be very straight and sturdy so that the drops fall in a straight line.
I use many kinds of containers to catch the drops – goblets, mugs, bowls, cake pans, whatever. To catch reflections, you need a large container.
For liquids, I usually use a mixture of water with some milk. Sometimes, just water or milk. Milk is much easier to use – it’s thicker and reacts more slowly than water .
Sometimes I experiment with temperatures – warm water is spashier and cold water is slower. Sometimes I add ice cubes to water. Water is most dense at 4 degrees C. You can also add a bit of glycerine to water to slow it down a bit.
For colors I usually just use food coloring. I’ve tried many others – coffee (which works quite well), wine, soy sauce, whatever is around and has colour.
Flash Exposure Compensation should be set to the lowest setting (or close to it) because it is this low setting which causes a very quick burst of light to catch the action.
Shutter speeds vary from bulb to very high, but now I use a shutter speed of 200 or 250 to sync with my external flash.
Drops are released very quickly -about 7 to 10 per second – for this method I use a 5 second timer on my camera and release two or three drops just before the shutter opens.
That’s it in a nutshell. This is as technical as it gets for me. Just a fun hobby.

The Time Machine

This is my new set-up with The Time Machine. I have finally stepped up from manual drops and this is what I chose to use. Now my success rate has improved to 100% with this rig and I can control exactly what type of splash I want. In the first comment box is The Time Machine on the left and the control box for the water drip set-up on the right.
It looks simple but it packs a punch. All I have to do is stand behind the camera, push the button and watch the results on the LCD screen.
On the Time Machine I have control over the number of drops I want, the interval between the drops, the size of the drop, and the flash lag. The shutter speed has to be slow enough to allow for the flash lag.
Bryan Mumford has spent considerable time and effort in creating this drip kit and putting a lot of time into working out any bugs and keeping it uncomplicated for the user. One of the great benefits of The Time Machine is the customer service and support.

The Time Machine has many other functions besides high speed. I’m looking forward to doing some time lapse with it this summer.

Check more on her website liquiddropart.com.

The Comprehensive Water Drop Photography Guide