Playing with water is fun!

This post is also available in: Dutch

Tamara Terzic (1/200s at f/4.5 on 85mm) – Studio Hans van Eijsden Photography, Zwolle, Netherlands

Oh this was such a nice day. Throwing water balloons on model Tamara Terzic and trying to freeze the water with special ultra short flash durations. And it worked! 🙂

I’ve done Japanese fighting sports for about 12 years. Because of those sports my speed of reaction is really good, I can apply exactly the right timing by hand, no need to trigger the camera shutter by an automated workflow. It’s something inside my head: I can visualize the flow of the water drops before the actual throwing of the water happens, and then I can press the shutter button several ms after the big splash. It just works.

We used water balloons filled with normal clear drinking water. But I wanted to create a contrasty colorful separation between the water and the background, so I decided to light the water from the back with some strobes pointing through green gels. The opposite of green is pink, so I made the background that color by using a background light with pink gel.

The flash durations of the back lights were 1/5250s and the flash duration of the key light (a beauty dish with grid) was 1/5000s. I used thumbtacks (drawing pins) taped on her head to let the water balloons pop. Thanks Ayse Aslan for the hair & makeup, for throwing those ice cold things and for giving us enough reason to laugh and keep laughing. 😉