American in Spain

Coin Splashes

February 18, 2009
ER Drop

Recently a friend and photography mentor of mine nudged me towards purchasing an additional flash for my camera. I'm still just learning to use it, but one of the things I've already discovered is that it is waaay more powerful than my built-in on-camera flash. My built-in flash doesn't have nearly enough power to illuminate shots taken at maximum shutter speed (0.125 ms); they come out completely black. But with my new flash, I can take photos of things at very fast shutter speeds. So I thought I would go back and make another attempt at photographing water droplets. I needed a backdrop. With so much money invested in this hobby, I figured I should create my own photography studio, complete with professional logo and watermarked images. So I picked a font and quickly designed a logo. No doubt I'm not the first person to combine the letters E and R in this way, but hey, I kinda like it. At least I didn't put a Roman numeral 2 in the middle.

On to the photos!

Water Drop

This is actually a composite image. The drop and splash pillar were from two different photos. I love the way the ER is focused and upside down in the drop.

After a few more drop photos, I got tired of the little splashes and wanted to spice things up. Not being a parent yet, I didn't have any rubber balls lying around the house. I finally settled on a two-euro coin. All the splashes you see below were created by dropping a two-euro coin onto a plate filled with water.

Coin Splash Coin Splash Coin Splash

You can see King Juan Carlos's face pretty well on this one.

Coin Splash Coin Splash Coin Splash

Oops! This one escaped my state-of-the-art photography studio! I wonder if the ridges in the splash are related to the ridges along the edge of the coin.

Coin Splash

This one's cool because you can see the little individual ER drops. It looks good large.

Coin Splash

I like how the top of the splash is all on the same plane.

I'm pretty happy with this little experiment. The backdrop with something written on it was definitely a good idea. Too bad I never remember to buy food coloring when I'm in the States. It doesn't seem to exist here in Spain.