Skip to main content

Gelatinous Cubes and Water Drops

I like high speed photography, but I am limited to what I can do within my studio space and with the equipment I have.  So I usually focus on dropping things, this weekend it was gelatinous cubes and colored water. 

The gelatinous cubes were a new for me, and still require refinement to the gel composition.  I bought clear Knox gelatin and made two batches.  (I did add food coloring to the mix for contrast.) The first batch was a little mushy while the second batch was firmer like a Jell-O giggler.  The softer batch worked better, providing more deformity while tumbling and a better splat upon impact.  As I dropped the cubes and sphere I hit the shutter release button.  The squishy cubes lasted for about 10 drops depending on the height of the drop.  While the very firm sphere appeared indestructible.   I may try this again, possibly throwing the cubes against a wall instead of dropping them.


Firm Sphere Impact
Squishy Cube Impact

I have worked with water drops before. When I usually do these I fill a dish with water. Then hold a plastic Ziploc bag filled with water and food coloring with a hole over the dish and hit the shutter release. This is hugely a trial and error process.  Besides my usual process, I also tried just having the water drip directly onto a hard surface, this appeared to work nicely.  I then modified my drop mixture.  I added corn starch to the water in the baggie, this thickened the mixture. However, this also reduced the translucence of the drops.  The mixture appeared to produce better patterns, so I may try this with a gelatin mixture so I can keep the translucence of straight water.

Cornstarch Mix on hard surface
Water drop into pool of water
Water on hard surface

The set up for both shoots were as follows. I placed a clear sheet down on the table to protect it. I then stood white foam board on top of the table for the background.  I connected the plastic to white foam board sides to create side walls and to two stands to create a catch basin of sorts.  I then placed my camera with flash, macro lens and shutter release trigger on a tripod angled down towards the drop surface.  I used bounce flash technique for most of the shots.

Overall this was productive time in the studio. I like the water drop results but think the gelatinous cube shots need work.  
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cobwebs Everywhere

On October 7 th , I did a studio spooky session with Coralinx Cosplay .   The central theme of this shoot was a pretty goth girl who had a fondness for spiders and decorating with cobwebs, making it a perfect Halloween session.   Note: Cobwebs are defined as abandoned or old spiderwebs that have collected dust.   Many cobwebs are the result of comb-footed spider (i.e., black widows) that make irregularly shaped webs.   Spiderwebs are active structures built to catch prey.   (Source: Western Exterminator Company) For these sessions, I used: Photography Equipment Other Equipment Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Westcott FJ400 2 Phottix Strobes 2 strip boxes 2 rectangular soft boxes 2 c-stands 3 light stands Backdrop stand Black seamless 2 Westcott silicon gels Tether cable Laptop Laptop holder Sandbags A-clamps Spyder Color checker Fake cobwebs Table ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Katsucon 2025 Wrap - Up

Katsucon 2025 didn’t seem as crowded as 2024, but I still wasn’t feeling it.  Katsucon will always have a special place in my heart, but I think I’m just bored with it, from a creative perspective.   While I still love working with cosplayers the location itself no longer excites me and I’m tired of fighting the crowds.  If I return to Katsucon 2026 I think I’ll just set up a studio in my room and do studio sessions.  I can be a lot more creative with a studio session, and I get to use all my lights.  So now let's talk about photography.   For Katsucon I was shooting with my Canon R6 with an 24-105 Canon RF lens, and I had a fisheye lens on me as well, but we will discuss that later.  I had two speedlights, one on camera which acted as a trigger 90-percent of the time and one on a light stand which my husband would hold during shoots. This year I booked 11 cosplay sessions and shot 869 frames.  I shot a range of ISOs from ISO 100 to ISO 800...
Post a Comment
Read more

2025 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2026

This year was a bit interesting especially since during the day, I’m a government employee, which resulted in a lot of stress and a 42-day furlough.  I didn’t attend as many cosplay events with the D.C Cosplay group, now Costume and Camera, as I normally would have, due to schedule conflicts.  However, I traveled up to Poughkeepsie, New York for two photo events, one of which I was a featured photographer.  I attended two conventions, one of which didn’t turn out as expected and the other just confirmed my decision to take a break from it.  Though happily I did a lot of studio work this year, which I enjoyed.  But on the other hand, I lost my dear “studio supervisor”, my dog Teddy.  He liked to great clients and then “supervise” while lying/sleeping in his bed. I also started to work on the business side of my photography work, by investing in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) site to manage bookings, schedules, and payments. No more trying to juggle...
Post a Comment
Read more