Paint Splash Triptych

Walking into any contemporary art store, one is sure to find art pieces made up of either a single image cropped onto multiple canvases, or a series of images each mounted on a separate canvas. My personal favourite is the latter, as usually any one of the images can stand on its own, however when put together most often than not they tell a compelling story.

I can’t truthfully say that I had this in mind when I was experimenting with my paint splash project earlier in April. However once I started editing my images, I came up with the idea of creating a Triptych, depicting the fate of the paint drop as it hits the ground. Here are the 3 images in sequence – anyone think they would make for a good art piece on my wall?

triptych1a

Paint splash2 - 1920c

triptych3

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Paint Splash

What better way to start the weekend than planning a photo shoot! This past Friday I left work and headed to do a bit of shopping in preparation for a mini project I’ve been wanting to do for some time now. The shopping list included a small bottle of red water-based paint, two glossy white ceramic tiles and an eye dropper. The idea was to photograph at high speed, a paint drop as it rebounds off the ground (or in this case one of the ceramic tiles).

The setup was fairly simple. I set the first tile flat on a coffee table, then placed the second tile perpendicular to it, essentially creating a mini studio. I then watered down my paint, squeezed some into my eyedropper, and then fixed the eyedropper vertically above the flat tile onto one of my tripods. I then fixed my speedlight flash near the eyedropper facing down, so that the light would rebound off the standing tile. Here is a photo taken with my cell phone of the entire setup (link).

With a towel standing by, I then started squeezing drop after drop, while triggering my camera with my wireless remote. It took a bit of luck and coordination, but boy was I happy when I managed to get this beautiful red crown!

Taken with my Canon 60D and Canon 100mm F2.8 macro lens, at ISO 200, F16, 1/200th of a sec. Flash set to manual at 1/16th of its power output.

Paint splash2 - 1920c