Your opinion? An old trick with a twist...water drop refraction

[Chavezshutter]

Hello,

It has been a while since I have posted one of these, I do practice them from time to time and since getting an auto rail I have been trying to do stacked versions
but this one here is a single shot while trying to get back some old skills. The green leaf is a type of 4 leaf clover or shamrock which is fuzzy and repels water nicely to make round droplets, the flower in the background is a pink gerbera where i have placed most of my lighy in order to light the scene, this refraction shot was made shooting vertically which I havent done since I started doing this type of shooting a few years back. Hope you like it

 

[lovitazoe]

Hmm..I feel the background colour is too strong and the 5 clear water droplets on the leaves are a bit distracting.
But the reflection of gerbera in water droplets,in between the leaves, are so lovely. They remind me of epoxy resin flowers used for jewelry .

 

[Jack]

Pin sharp Chavezshutter .I really love how you did it here. Have you used the spray as well?

 

[Tina Boes]

Those are some really strong colors for sure. Just curious, because I've dabbled a bit trying this myself with no real success, how far away from the droplets in the clover was the flower? A couple inches, or farther?

 

[Chavezshutter]

Hmm..I feel the background colour is too strong and the 5 clear water droplets on the leaves are a bit distracting.
But the reflection of gerbera in water droplets,in between the leaves, are so lovely. They remind me of epoxy resin flowers used for jewelry .

Hmm, the colour of the flower is actually pretty close to the flower I used. I always look for striking colours in the background flower for these type of shoots and I have a pretty good florist . My default settings for Lightroom are +18 for Vibrance and -7 for saturation which quite conservative. One thing I am guilty of is boosting the green leaf's colour, exposure,highlights,etc which might be throwing off the colour of the whole scene. I might redo the edit with more localized adjustments rather than universal, here is what the photo raw looked like before my edit...



I was also unsure about the droplets on the leaf but that was the outcome from spending a long time placing droplets with a syringe in the right spots sometimes even successfully . Placing the droplets is by far the hardest part of this photo, water rarely stays where you want it to and if the leaf becomes saturated with water the droplets are no longer round but will flatten out instead which wont work. I may well composite them away in my revised edit.

Thanks for your comments

 

[Chavezshutter]

Pin sharp Chavezshutter .I really love how you did it here. Have you used the spray as well?

no spray, for this to work I needed the droplets to sit on the edge of the leaves and that requires a syringe, a steady hand and a lot of patience .. the extra droplets on the leaf are little mishaps which I decided to keep, I shot this over a few hours and this was one frame I chose, some of the others were better in some ways but not good in others so I went with this one

 

[Chavezshutter]

Those are some really strong colors for sure. Just curious, because I've dabbled a bit trying this myself with no real success, how far away from the droplets in the clover was the flower? A couple inches, or farther?

I need to thank both you and lovitazoe for making me look at the colour aspect from a different point of view. My stance on colour was that if the colour is true to life then its fine, it had never occurred to me that even an accurate colour can be too strong and I have never approached an edit from that perspective, thank you ladies !!

For this shot my flower was about 3 inches away from the droplets, it probably could have been a touch closer and I would have had less black circles around each refracted flower within the drops. The distance will vary depending on the size of the flower, closer for smaller flowers and further for bigger ones, try to fill the droplet with as much of the flower as possible without trimming the edges in the image within the refraction image, also light the flower mostly and not the drop so much. Let me know if you need any tips.

 

[Jack]

no spray, for this to work I needed the droplets to sit on the edge of the leaves and that requires a syringe, a steady hand and a lot of patience .. the extra droplets on the leaf are little mishaps which I decided to keep, I shot this over a few hours and this was one frame I chose, some of the others were better in some ways but not good in others so I went with this one

You had to do a delicate job to achieve this photo . Especially using a syringe for droplets. I would love to see the set up, just interesting

 

[Helix_2648]

Interesting idea and technique even if I have to agree to lovitazoe. I would prefer a bit more light on the leaves without the other droplets and maybe a yellow or orange flower. But that's just my opinion.