Photography Ideas At Home.

As we enter the 2nd stage of COVID-19 lockdown, here is an awesome idea for photography at home.

Oil and Water, they obviously don’t mix and it creates and very unique image.I am in isolation from just moving to Cambridge, Ontario and I took a break from my usual Product Photography and dabbled in macro photography.

This was very simply and easy to capture. Im going to show you how to create your own oil and water macro photo. Read till the end to see more final images!

The Setup:

First off, you will need a tripod so that you can safely and securely mount your camera above the oil and water mixture. I use a simply tripod I purchased from Best Buy for my Product Photography.

Next, you will need a small table or stand to put everything on. I used my Ikea nightstand for this. I propped up my glass dish on top of two candles so that I can fit my phone under the glass as a coloured backdrop.

Lighting:

Next we will talk about lighting. I was using my Mount dog Continuous Light so that I can focus on the oil but it turned it off after I focused and it was not used in the exposure. I used my Nikon sb910 speed lite as a main light. I had it off to the side aimed toward he bubbles but not directly aimed at them. This allowed for a defined ring around the bubbled but you can also see the blue background.

I strongly recommend some sort of remote trigger for your camera. Either a camera remote like I have or use the self timer. The less you touch and move the camera the better your focus will be!

Finally on to the fun part! add a little bit of water to your clear dish. I then used a fork to carefully place little dots of oil on the water. I noticed they weren’t really defined enough so I used this trick I saw on YouTube. Add a drop of dish soap and your bubbled will shrink but become really defined! After I did that I added a big glob of oil and just gently mixed it till I was happy with the result. I then framed up my shot by moving the dish around to find the perfect buster of bubbles and then focused.

Settings:

I had to play around a bunch with the settings to achieve my desired look. I used the largest aperture I could to make sure I got enough of the bubbles in focus. I believe my aperture was around f20-26. To compensate for this large aperture I did have to use a high flash power and raise my ISO a little.

Play around with the settings until your achieve your desired result!

I had a lot of fun shooting this set and I hope you enjoyed reading!

Keep scrolling to see more oil and water shots!

Be sure to subscribe and follow my Instagram for more Photoshoots and behind the scenes!

follow my instgram to see more behind the scenes content!