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Turbulence or Tranquility?

by pnicholls

With 1/800th of a second as my fastest shutter speed, I wanted to be sure and choose a project that should be well within the limits of my camera (Olympus C-3020Z).  As with many other photographers, some sort of water shot immediately came to mind.  I wanted to create something interesting using water as the stopped motion.  

Initially, I placed one compact disc (CD) into the kitchen sink over the drain and started running some water.  It didn't take long to realize that the drain was not a very appealing part of the photo.  I put a few more CD's in the sink to cover up the drain and realized that  I could use the different colors to add a little more interest.   After a number of shots, I tried to arrange the CD's by hiding the inner ring, thereby concealing their identity somewhat and hopefully adding a little more interest.

As more CD's were added, the running water from the faucet was building up and causing the CD's to float and reposition themselves. This balance had to be managed to prevent the floating.  I also introduced the kitchen sink sprayer to provide another water source to catch in motion.  I actually sprayed the water stream up from the left hand sink with the right hand sink as the target.  This provided some nice impact craters on the streaming water.  I held the camera with the right hand and started shooting in shutter priority mode.  I used a slow flash to illuminate the subject, which also provided some reflection from the CD surfaces.  Water drops were suspended in mid air, some exhibiting shadows providing some element of depth.  The challenge was to try and get all of those attributes in one shot.  I took about 60 shots in all.  Unfortunately, they are all gone now except for a few, some of which I have shared below:

Thinking about a title and putting back all of the CD's, I ran across the CD that had the guy with his scared look.  I threw him in the sink and that really provided a nice effect.  I went through some more CD's and ran across the one with the lady on the phone with a smile on her face and threw that one in the sink also.  As the project was nearing completion, the title became obvious.  The shot finally submitted follows:

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