Rain stops play but liquid inspires art...

With all best laid plans to hit the Keramas Beach Break here in Bali this morning with our team rider 'Dek' Merta Yasa in place I woke up to find gray skies, fast flowing clouds and the ominous sounds of distant thunder. I was under the impression that the rainy season had come to an end and that we were now looking towards warm, sunny days, basking in the tropical heat that is usually associated with this island. Not so. Instead I'm left feeling like a weekend tripper in the middle of winter determined to enjoy the conditions thrown at me whilst sitting on the promenade benches of Dungeness! So what to do? Whilst sitting watching the rain it cast my thoughts to another aspect of photography that I sometimes practice.

Me being a bit of a nerd I always thought that water droplet photography is pretty cool. So I started to look into that about two years ago and decided to give it a bash. Now water, is water, is water, right? Well, not for me. You see, I notice movements, colors and reactions to forces acting on it once I slow the simplest of events such as a water drop hitting the surface of another liquid. So I started experimenting. I soon got bored with the traditional droplets and started to look at how liquids interact with each other. Liquid doesn't have to be pure water, it can be thickened with glycerin, colored with food dye or can be other forms of liquid such as detergents and liquid soaps etc.

Et Voila, this is the result of a couple of hours looking at finding options to occupy my brain on a wet and windy afternoon a couple of months ago. We seem to get a lot of these of late so I guess I'll be looking to get out the Infra Red timing devices and set the whole rig up again for some more adventures with liquids. I guess my only gripe with the image is the line of small bubbles around the base of the larger Dome, but hey, can't have it all right?

For the Photo Junkies out there the tech specs for this are as follows. I used what is called the Time Machine from Mumford Engineering. This allows me to plug an electronic water valve into my computer via an interface and then set mili-second precision over parameters such as drip size, interval between drips and time lapse of drips over a sequential time frame. Using the small diameter glass I blew a detergent bubble and dripped a single droplet on to it. The result was this engaging display of surface tension, the resistance of the water surface, to heavier bodies acting on it. This also explains why some small insects are able to skate across the surface of the water without the risk of drowning.

OK, well I said some of my posts would be laborious so I'll try not to bore you much longer. The rest of the day entails a drive to Nusa Dua to buy some ladies stuff with the wifey. Then off to a villa to measure up for some images that will be shown there and then lastly to one of the garment factories to check on a full screen cover tee we are developing.

Cheers,
Mark.