Water Lenses

 

I started off earlier today trying to shoot some colour abstracts by photographing different colour backgrounds through a dimpled beer class.  I struggled to produce any suitable portfolio shots so Googled the set up to see if someone knew how to do it better.  I found a training video on YouTube by Gavin Hoey on "Water Reversal".  This is a technique I remember coming across some time ago and had forgotten about until today.   

When light passes between different media (i.e. air, glass, water) it is refracted ("bent").  A glass of water acts as a lens and so refocuses the light passing through it.  As a simple lens, it reverses the image passing through it.  This photographic technique places a geometric pattern behind a glass of water and records the result.

For my setup I used some backgrounds downloaded off Gavin Hoey's blog, a shiny perpex floor and some black cards to contain the light.  I originally used an off camera flash to illuminate the background but found the flash on my camera (the master flash) was bouncing back off the glass so tried without and found there was enough light in the apartment.

I will not attempt to describe the approach ere as that is done very well on YouTube.  I intend to watch more of Gavin's videos; he is a very good presenter.

Lessons I learned were:

• Scratches or marks on the glass stick out like a sore thumb in the final images.  Dishwashers have ruined many of our glasses for this technique.
• Drops of water/marks on the perspex also ruin the image
• You can use a mobile device camera provided there is sufficient light.

Taken on iPhone

This image was taken with a mobile phone using the same setup I had used for my longer focal length lenses.  If I had build the set up for a mobile phone I would have placed the glass etc closer to the end of the table where I was standing in order to get more of the scene in.

All images were cropped in Lightroom to a square format and colours enhanced.  The same edits could be done in Google photos.

My studio set up is shown in this final photo: 

The table top studio optimised for 40mm lens on DSLR.