Bursting Water Balloons
Highspeed photography using external flashes has been a topic here before, with the matches. Now it is time for that again – but the new idea relates to the old one like fire and water.
Water games in the garden
Capturing subjects that elude the naked eye is one of the biggest draws to photography for me. Specifically, I was motivated this time by a creative challenge from the field of product photography. Since it involves something with a “splashy” character, I came up with the idea of putting a bursting water bomb in the background. To see if this would work at all as I had thought it up, the first experiments in the garden were now on the agenda.
The key to the target photo is once again the use of external flashes. Here I was able to build very well on the experiences of “Fire & Flame“. The crucial point is to set the external flashes to their lowest power (1/128). This cuts the flash duration down to only 1/20,000th of a second, which freezes the movement perfectly. And the flashes can fire several times in direct succession, keeping up with the camera’s continuous shooting mode, which makes timing much easier.
The actual setup is pretty simple: a black background and a boom stand to hang the water balloons from. The two flashes are aimed at the balloon on either side, each at a 45° angle from the front. On the camera, which I triggered with a cable release, I used lenses with various focal lengths between 50 and 90 millimeters. I made all camera settings, including focus, manually.
If you look around on the internet, you can find many different approaches to trigger the camera and flashes at the right moment. I opted for the simplest option, relying on continuous shooting mode and a bit of luck while poking the balloons with a needle. In fact, the timing ended up being right for about half of the photos.
The video below illustrates the process. If you pause the video at the right spot, you can see almost exactly the image with the red balloon below:
Of course, this results in a lot of water splashing around – but most of it goes off to the side, so the tripods and I got our feet wet. Initially, I had placed a tub underneath – with the result that the water splashed upwards and the flashes got doused. So I went with the wet feet…
Post-processing
After the equipment had dried and the terrace had been tidied up, the photos had to be post-processed. The biggest task of course was removing the stick with the needle, with which I had poked the balloons. To do this, I took the images into Photoshop, where the clone stamp tool did most of the work. You can still guess where the pin was hitting, because the balloon bursts away from it and consequently flies off to the opposite side.
Further processing steps were aimed at getting the background all black where it wasn’t already, as well as enhancing contrast, sharpness and detail. It appeals to me to print one of these images in large format, so you can see the individual drops and structures even better.
The result
All in all this experiment can definitely be considered a success. But this will certainly be repeated. The final photo will be even more colorful – the water itself will be colored differently. I’m already curious how the colors will come out in the light from the flashes. But even linke this, the pictures are already candidates for the next calendar.
