Winter’s a great time for indoor photography so I set up my DIY drip photo contraption again – in the spare room this time. Pash wasn’t ecstatic to see I’d pushed all her computer equipment to one side but I persuaded her it was all in a good cause!
This time, my aim was to create a crown shape and involve multiple colours.
When I’ve used water in the past, the results have looked a little… erm, well… “watery”; A bit washed out and a little glass like. I like these sculptures when they’re done well but I always seem to have trouble setting the lighting up properly. I believe, I need much more diffuse light so a nice big softbox may well be the answer, although I cant picture how I’d get it close enough to light things up properly.
Anyway, I figured I’d use milk to get the molten plastic kind of look I was after. I dropped the milk from about 40-50 cm onto a sheet of black acrylic that I’d acquired at a local plastics shop (No, I dont have any idea how such a business has managed to keep going when the likes of Jessops and Blockbuster have gone bust!). Perhaps I should buy some more black acrylic sheets whilst I can?!
I’ve used blue and red food colouring to create the picture here. It’s not the “cleanest” of images but I got so fed up wiping down the surface after each shot that I ran a few off each time. It just so happens that this was one that pleased me most.
They say a magician never reveals his secrets so I’ll keep a few of my methods to myself, like how I get the seperate colours. It’s nothing to do with image manipulation and I could definitely do better but what’s the fun of producing a perfect image first time!? Most of the enjoyment in this kind of photography is the practice and the random nature of the results. No two images are ever the same!
