The Kitchen Sink

About This Photo:
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure: 1/2500
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 1600
Lens: 50mm f/1.4

I love water splashing photos. Water is fascinating to photograph. Depending on your settings, you can make it look soft and lacy, or you can make it look like this: seeing little droplets frozen in mid-air.

I've been wanting to try to take a good photo water in action for awhile. But to get water splashing, you need a lot of light coming into the lens and a really fast shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed (this shot was taken at 1/2500 of a second), there is obviously less time for the light to get in to take the shot. I didn't have any special lighting set up, so I opened the aperture as wide as it would go, bumped up the ISO to the maximum, and set the shutter speed at a speed that was fast enough to capture the droplets without also going too dark.

The photo ends up with a somewhat noisy (i.e., "grainy") look because of the high ISO, but in this case I think it kind of works -- makes it feel kind of nostalgic somehow. Ideally, it would be great if it looked smoother, but sometimes I'm okay with a little imperfection.

You know how it is: just keepin' it real.

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Lessons Learned or Affirmed:

• Everyday moments like doing to the dishes can afford new and interesting opportunity to expand one's photography skills. I got so wrapped up in taking photos of water, I forgot why I had it running in the first place.
• If you're going to do a picture like this of splashing water, try LOTS of different shots lots of different ways. Out of a hundred or so shots that I took of the water, this was the only one that I felt like was worth sharing.