One of my favorite macro subjects in the garden is water drops. If you see a water drop and look closely at it, you’ll find magic, beauty, and perhaps even the ineffable. Water drops are worlds of their own. They follow optical rules of their own.
Inside these spheres you will find a play of light, focus, shadows, and colors. On the outer edge of the water drop, its “skin” plays with reflection and transparency. The reflection of the outer world is a distortion and refraction of our real world, but one that is recognizable.
Making a great water drop photo often involves figuring out how the outer-edge skin will relate to the interior world, and how the reflection of the outside world relates back to each of these elements. I like to conceptualize water drop images where there is a holistic harmony between all three elements.
When I approach a water drop, I think of the water drop as a jewel that encapsulates its own universe. Therefore, a field of water drops (when one is lucky enough to find them) is a field of universes, with each wet gem its own world.
It’s important to keep in mind that water drops are small, fragile, and constantly in motion. Outdoors in the garden, which is where I like to photograph water drops, they are subject to wind, and the vagaries of motion that can happen when I inadvertently brush my tripod leg against a connected part of the plant holding the water drop.
Light in the world around the water drop is constantly changing, and these changes are amplified by the optical distortion inherent in the spherical nature of a water drop.
You don’t find water drops all the time! Great water drops are rare indeed. The best water drops come after a rain storm, or are formed by the natural action of a heavy morning dew. But wind and evaporation from the rising temperatures following sunrise can quickly decimate even the most robust-seeming water drops. If you can call a water drop robust, which I don’t think you really can!
Perhaps contrary to one’s expectations, water drops from a hose, sprinkler, or spray bottle are quite different from “natural” water drops—although it may take quite a bit of observation to see the difference.
All in all, the water drop in the garden is a paradoxical subject. On the one hand, like any garden subject, garden water drops must be approached with serenity and in a meditative frame of mind. On the other, this is an unexpectedly rare and ephemeral subject, and when I see great water drops in my garden and photographic conditions are right, I know this is a subject that isn’t readily available very often, and that any given water drop may disappear before I can look at it twice in a small gust of wind. I try to keep both challenging aspects of water drops and photography in my mind when I head into my garden, and despite the challenges, this remains one of my favorite and most rewarding kinds of photography.
A reflection is a mirror image in which left and right are reversed. A refraction is a curvature or distortion within a reflection, caused because the speed of light changes as it enters a water drop (or other optical medium).
As a subset of physics, optical science is largely about the way refractions and reflections inter-operate and bend the curves of light that form our vision of the world. One of the fun things about water drop photography is that the photographer gets to make images that illustrate fundamental optical science in a very real-world kind of way. This is playing with light!
Most water drops are dome shaped, or even spherical. This means that they reflect an extremely broad view of the world around them, just as a fisheye lens does. The more refraction in the reflection, the less realistic the view of the world. In my opinion, the best water drop photography has elements within the water drop, both of reflection and refraction. In addition, refractions can manifest themselves as lens artifacts in the process of water drop photography, for example, as shown in the image to the right.
Keep in mind that the extent of reflection and the degree of refraction varies with extremely small shifts in the camera’s position. This is a function of the fundamental law of reflection, that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection (see page 80). The most interesting natural water drop photos involve mixing reflections and refractions in unexpected ways, so I always try to be mindful of my camera’s position, and that very slight changes can make a very big difference when making these kind of images.
One final point about water drop reflections is that reflectivity combined with the wide-angle nature of a spherical water drop means that you and your camera are very likely to be in your photograph. Unless it is your intention to create a “selfie”—and this is usually not, or never, what I want to do!—you need to take care to avoid being the central attraction in a water drop photo. A telephoto-macro lens (see page 127) can help with this because it makes it much easier to get close to your subject without also being reflected in it.
The biggest challenge in garden water drop photography involves the fact that water drops are constantly changing and in motion. Extreme close-up magnification compounds the problem of motion. Making things worse from a technical perspective, usually I want to stop down the lens for maximum depth of field. This implies a longer-duration shutter speed, during which I need my water drop subject to keep very still to remain sharp.
The other possible technical approach to this problem—using a macro flash setup for primary lighting—brings a different set of issues, since the strobe will replace the refractions and reflections inherent in the water drop with its own—often blinding and unattractive—flash of light.
Meditating on this technical challenge one day in my garden, I glanced down and happened to see water drops clinging to a spider web in a sheltered corner of a rock wall. In fact, the water drops on the spider web seemed quite stable and out of the wind. Furthermore, there was space beneath the web for me to insert a flower, which could be reflected and refracted by the much more stable water drops.
Over time, I have had a number of “spider web studios.” I sometimes encourage their creation by bringing dead insects as thanks and tribute over to small spider webs in the making.
I look for these webs in parts of my garden where they will not be overly vulnerable to the wind, and where there is an easy way to add my floral “models” in a position where they will show well in their photographic “open call.”
Should you not choose to encourage spiders in your garden, it would be understandable. However, if you are interested in natural water drop photography, I encourage you to look for situations—such as spider webs—where the natural fragility and propensity to constant motion of the water drop is restrained by the environment.
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