P365 Sep07: Water art with Mel

Our friend Mel is a fantastically talented and creative artist, and she is currently doing an art course at TAFE.  She requested some help with some photos for an assignment she is working on at the moment. We filled up a small (35litre) unused fish tank with water, set up my two flashes and some backdrops, and spent the whole evening experimenting and getting wilder and wilder with our creative ideas.

Please look at these photos at their full size by clicking on the images below!

Mel had an antique looking brass photo frame, which she wanted to thread with flowers and ribbons and drop into the tank:

We had the idea of trying a longer exposure, motion blur photo. After seeing the results on the back of the camera, and not liking what we saw very much, we moved on and tried something else. When we got the RAW file into Lightroom however, we kinda went to town and really liked the result in the end:

Looking for a "concept" for her assignment, Mel had some interesting but slightly "out there" ideas, such as drowning daisies:

As we were getting towards the end of the evening, I wanted to try an idea I've seen before and wanted to try for the longest time. So we poured some milk into the tank and shot the results. I love this next one, and rotated it 180 degrees to make it look more like what it reminded me of, a volcanic plume:

Here's another that I overprocessed for effect. I'm not sure if this works, or if it's just "try hard":

After the milk, we tried soy sauce! It worked surprisingly well, and against the milky white, the brown reminded me of the clouds on the planet Jupiter. This one, however, I processed in a different way which reminded me of another liquid:

Finally Mel wanted to see what the picture frame would look like in the murky milk/soy water. I was skeptical, but the results were something totally unexpected! The flashes were lighting the side of the tank, but to see the frame it had to be held right up to the front. The result is a backlit, foggy environment which the frame mysteriously fades back into. I think the result is slightly eery, and gives a sense of the frame and flowers decomposing in their own filth:

The evening's experiments were fantastic fun, and we were both amazed at the creativity unleashed by bouncing ideas off each other. Lessons I learned include: even if something sounds silly, try it anyway, there's nothing to lose, and you might be surprised; even if a shot looks poor on the back of the camera, some creative processing can really make a great artistic piece; two heads are better than one, when the creative process is in full swing, bouncing ideas off another person can have unpredictable and inspiring results; throwning together a lot of unrelated items can have unexpected results, don't be afraid to experiment with everything you can get your hands on.

It was a surreal moment when I was dipping sodden flowers and ribbons wrapped around a frame in a fishtank full of soy milk soup, with Mel snapping away. We just had to laugh at the absurdity of the process, but we couldn't argue with the results!

I look forward to milking the creative juices with Mel again, hopefully soon! Thanks for a fun shoot Mel.