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Futility in drops…almost…

As many of you likely know, recently we had a decent amount of snow here. It rarely snows here around Seattle and when it does, it’s even rarer for it to stick. Normally the nice thing is we can take a short trip to the mountains and enjoy several feet of snow, then drive back home and not have to worry about plowing the driveway. Recently though, it not only snowed but the snow stuck.

I noticed the sun came out and I decided to see if I can get a good ‘melting drop’ picture. I previously took this shot during another snow melt.

I think this is a nice picture, but I wanted to see if I could top it. My goal was to get a drop in the process of falling. As I’m not much for suspense, here’s the shot that I wound up with.

This shot proved much tougher than I originally anticipated and I wound up taking 200 frames trying to get this shot. There are several problems when photographing drops.

1. They are very difficult to predict. I have no idea when the drop will truly fall.
2. When the drop falls, it falls very fast. This makes it tough to get the drop in the viewfinder.
3. You have to be absolutely still to make sure the fall is in focus. I actually succeeded in getting two other drops during the day, but the others were out of focus.

It seemed every time the drop fell I would be just a bit too slow. The trick is to get the shot the instant the drop is ready to fall. If you wait for the drop to actually fall you will always be too late. I have two regrets with this shot.

1. The lighting is a bit too harsh. This is because my flashes were aligned in parallel to the drop, which in retrospect I should not have done. I did this in order to fit the flash in between the branches so as to not hit any of the icicles with the flashes. In the drop above, I had the flashes side by side and the lighting effect is better. It also probably didn’t help that the more powerful flash (I always set them to 80%-20% to make the light less flat) was on top. Next time if I need to put my flashes this way I should switch the power ratio on them.
2. It would be nice to have a prettier reflection. The easy way to do this is to put a small flower behind the icicle and prop it up somehow. Of course, this is easier said than done and I did not have a small flower at the time.

Still, I am very proud of my shot and I plan to print it out and add it to the wall of my office soon.

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Tags: drop, ice, macro, melt, photography, spring, technique