Today’s Photo Minute is a unique behind the scenes look at how our challenge of macro this past weekend took on new meaning for me. I will show you what my original idea was and then how it morphed into something I think is pretty cool (pictured above).
The Assignment:
I hope that seeing what went through my mind and how I kept trying different things to see what I liked best will be inspire you to new creativity and practicing the concepts you know. Below I will show you the progression of shots from the first concept to the final result.
My original idea was to simply photograph this small fountain in the birdbath
I started to hone in on the actual water spurting out of the bath. It was here that I noticed the reflection of the bubbling water but because it was polarized, I did not like how the surface reflections looked .
I decided to turn the polarizing filter so that it did not cut through the reflections on the surface of the water and liked this abstract look even more.
While I started with the fountain of water being my original subject batter, my attention was then drawn to the cool look of the water swirling back into the pump. I decided I actually liked this better than than my original idea.
While I shot almost 250 images (was firing at 5 frames a second to catch the water bursting up, swirling back down and everything in between), this was one of my favorite frames because of the offset circle and then the color and the pattern in front and in back of it. I shot this in A mode at 1/1000 shutter speed to stop the motion and F14 to try to get even a little depth of field. The resulting ISO was 9000. I actually did this in manual focus mode as the autofocus system struggled to know where to focus and to adjust as the pump moved closer and further away from me. The camera lens was only about 8 inches away and was just above the surface of the water.
This is the final cropped and edited image. I used dehaze to make the patterns in the water stand out more and then upped the vibrancy of the colors. What I really like about this is that is actually looks like it is part of a river or natural scene you would see near a waterfall in the mountains. Who would guess it was just created in my front yard and started off as a fairly boring subject.
