So I was thinking...what has never been seen on DPC before?...hmmm. Besides genitalia (which of course is not allowed and I would not want to shoot anyway) all I could think of was tampons. Yes...tampons. Rainbow ones. With food coloring dropping into water :p
My mind works in mysterious ways sometimes, and when I have one of my crazy/random ideas, I just have to follow through because they don't come around very often. The last one was this image, which as you can see shares a slight resemblance to this entry (maybe I will make it a theme project for myself).
Anyway, I've never done a water shot where there is something above and below the water going on at the same time, so it was a learning process. I started by mixing the colors in tiny glass dishes (red, green, yellow, and blue) into all the colors of the rainbow. For future reference, indigo is the most difficult to produce. Then I dipped each tampon into the color and squeezed out the excess water, but it was very difficult to make them not be, er, lumpy looking as you can see. Next, I was originally trying to have the premixed rainbow food coloring drops lined up evenly on a piece of paper which I could carefully drop into the fish tank as I snapped the photo. Nice idea right? Ehh, not so good in the execution. When I had 30 minutes until the deadline, and everything set up except the coloring, I picked up the paper with the drops on it and they all spilled into one another, creating a brown mess and leaving me very panicked.
So, very frazzled, I just decided to squeeze the food coloring into the tank, while correctly mixing it at the same time, and snapping shots as soon as I could. I wasn't sure it would work, but since I could only try it once (if I did it more than once, I would have to change out the water, which takes 15 minutes) I just decided to go for it. I then dropped 2 drops of red, 2 drops of yellow and 1 drop of red, 2 drops yellow, 2 drops green, 1 drop blue, 2 drops blue 1 drop red, and finally 2 drops red and 1 drop blue...all within 15 seconds. To my amazement, it worked. But once I reached my camera, I saw I had a lighting problem. I had set up the lighting prior and it looked pretty good, but once I saw the water, I realized that the color wasn't illuminated at all. So, again, very rushed, I picked up one of my mini lights and moved my arm around until I thought the lighting was ok and snapped away quickly. I saw that all the red had sunk to the bottom (it was the 1st color to go in) I dropped in some more, which is why the red is higher and more condensed than everything else. As far as the water line goes, I wasn't sure what to do, I kind of liked the surface showing a little when the reflections of the tampons showed because it corresponded to the color beneath. My other thought was to show no surface and just have a straight line. Somehow this shot ended up in between. It bothers me a little, but out of the 5 acceptable shots I took, this one had the most "right" things going for it. Besides the processing, which I will re-do, I wish I had not taken this at an angle with everything bigger on the right. I also wish that the tampons were perfectly straight, but for some strange reason they weren't designed to do so :p
:::AFTER CHALLENGE:::
To answer your questions: "YES, they are what you think they are." lol
oooh, dropped .15 after rollover, ouchie.
I SWEAR I know how to edit. I think if I had started earlier in the day and had enough time to properly process this, I may have ended up with a 6.3+ BUT since it was my fault for being so last minute, I gladly accept my lower score. The main reason I entered this in its "unperfected" form was because I spent so much time and energy on the set-up and execution that I just wanted to turn in one of the better ones.
re-edited version:
As for the girls who were grossed out by this shot: If you think about it, it is just cotton on a string, and I made it rainbow for goodness sake! Get over it! ;)
As for the guys who were grossed out: I understand :)
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I really like the shot -- The colors look a little dull and lifeless because we know just how bright and wonderful they can be. I think this would have been a spectacular shot if you lightened it and brought the colors out a lot more.
would have been nice if you had got the meniscus edge on - maybe. And the picture is so damn good and convincing I keep finding myself tilting my laptop.
LOL! Well, that is different. I like the swirl of colors in the water but this is very dark and I feel that the lighting could use some work. It is hilarious that you even used the correct order of the rainbow! (ROYGBIV) Love love love that.
Could use some brightness/contrast to help this otherwise interesting and fun image, I think. The whites need to be white and fully contrasting with the colors. (not voting)
I had to do a double-take to see if those really were what I thought they were. I would have liked this much better if it was an abstract of the colored water.
I can honestly say I've not seen a before and after shot of this effect in a submitted image so yes, fits the challenge well. To me the inks are a little out of focus and the image needs straightening a tad. I love ink/smoke images but for me they need to be sharp and soft at the same time, this shot might be better with a WB adjustment imho.
Nice idea! I would prefer not to see the surface of the water so i think that a little lower angle could be better.
I also think that a dark background with the water being backlit could improve the picture.
OMG!!!! That is hilarious. I bet there will be people who don't even know what they are. LOL If I were to critique anything, I might have brought up the overall saturation (allowed in basic) to give it a bit more pop. I'll hand it to you for originality. ROFL
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