Experimental Abstract: Water Droplets and Light

It's an experiment I've wanted to try for a long time, and a rainy afternoon was the perfect time to do it. I used a water dropper to place droplets of room-temperature water on top of a CD/DVD. I then turned off the lights and used a flashlight and an LED headlamp to illuminate the drops, and took a bunch of pictures from various angles.

Of course this activity occurred in my primary photography locale at home, which is to say . . . about a foot and a half square space I cleared off on the bathroom sink. :-) In the end, I added a few red candles, and many more droplets. (And my husband came by and shook his head, to see me standing in the bathroom, taking pictures in the dark.)

It was a very interesting experiment and more fun than you might imagine. In the end, I took nearly 100 photos, and I have many ideas for things I would add or do differently next time. For instance, what if I tried different colors of liquids? Some effervescent ones? Piled Skittles or M&Ms along the edges? Used additional lights?

As far as the technical details, I used primarily the "super vivid" camera setting on my Canon PowerShot SX60 HS, which boosts the colors, alternated between the macro and regular settings, then uploaded my pics and messed with the color saturation and contrast in iPhoto.

A friend who commented on my images told me she thought they would be catnip to the vaporwave fans. I admit I had to look that one up! A site I found online says this:

"Vaporwave is a musical genre inspired by electronic dance music (EDM), New Age music and the indie dance genres chillwave and seapunk. Vaporwave is known for its use of Japanese characters in song titles, 80’s smooth jazz and Muzak samples that have been pitch shifted and time stretched with music editing software. The genre has often been described as a satire of corporate and consumerist culture and modern capitalism, specifically as a critique of mainstream EDM."

Hmm, so there, we BOTH probably learned something new today! ;-) Actually, even before she made that comment and I looked it up, my own impression of my resulting photos was that they spoke to me about how I think of music: full of color, shape, bounce, energy, and light.

I searched on vaporwave on YouTube and got a number of results, including this. It's two hours of "Back to the 80s" Best of Synthwave and Retro Electro Music. Huh, say what? Have a listen. It's very energizing. Think "mindless happy dance party mix." :-)

P.S. I had to post two blips today to catch up, so please also have a look at yesterday's blip of the Man Up on the Roof.