Water Drops
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Copyright by Martin Waugh
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Without a an electronic timer it's very difficult to capture the exact instant you want to see. The Time Machine makes it easy to photograph drops at any point in their fall.
The most basic way of shooting simple drops is to arrange a drip that falls through the optical interrupter. This triggers the Time Machine, which waits a programmed number of milliseconds and then fires a flash. This is done in a dark room with the camera shutter opened in advance.Drop photography was taken to stunning new realms by a photographer named Martin Waugh. Martin invented the technique of dropping one drop on top of another, creating "drop collisions". This requires very precise control of the timing of the drops and the ability to generate them accurately. Martin developed his own equipment to control his water drops. One of his images is shown on the right
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Copyright by Corrie White
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We now make an electronic water valve for the Time Machine that will let you capture these images.
The "Drip Kit" consists of a water valve attached to a reservoir to hold your fluid, a control box that plugs into the Time Machine, and a push button on a cord. You suspend the water valve over a pan with water in it and arrange your lighting.After programming the various parameters for your session, you simply press the trigger button. This causes the water valve to emit one or more drops (as you choose), opens the camera shutter, waits while the water drops fall, and finally triggers your flash at the precise millisecond you have set.
The image shown here was taken with the Time Machine and Drip Kit by water drop expert Corrie White.
The anatomy of a drop collision is clearly shown in the following slow motion movie made by "The Slow Mo Guys" with a high speed camera. They used a Time Machine and Drip Kit to release the drops with proper timing to get the collision.
Corrie White has many examples of her amazing work on Flickr. Her comments after receiving the Time Machine and Drip Kit were:
- "It's an ENORMOUS improvement. This is so much fun now. It used to be quite frustrating before, but now there is a 100% success rate which is soooo exciting."
An image of Corrie's Time Machine setup can be seen here.
You can see further examples of Corrie's water drop collisions here.
Copyright by Corrie White
Chris Cupit has made some spectacular images with water drops. He says the following about the Time Machine Drip Kit:
- "The Time Machine is a simply amazing piece of kit. Push one button and 2 drops fall, shutter triggers and then flash fires. I can set the size of the drops, interval between the drops and lag of the flash (down to 1/10,000th sec) and it's incredibly accruate. Chaos still plays a major part though the splashes are dependent on so many external factors that no two are exactly the same."
Chris' web site is:
http://www.drippyart.co.uk/
Copyright by Chris Cupit
Jim Reed at the Forestview Middle School in Baxter, Minnesota received a Drip Kit for his Time Machine on a Thursday. The next morning he sent us an image taken before school by three 7th graders. Jim said:
"Set it up and let them go to town ..... they LOVED it!"
The students are in a 7th Grade Multimedia Class focusing on photography and photo manipulation. Their website is:
Another image taken by four other students after 20 minutes of instruction with the Time Machine and Drip Kit.
This image was taken by Maria Gemma June. She is a self-taught newcomer to the Time Machine Drip Kit, and clearly has a talent for it. You can view her photostream on Flickr here:
Gemma