My Photography | Oil and Water Photography

A while ago now I spent a lot of time mastering the fine art of oil and water photography and seeing as I eventually got the hang of it I'm going to be adding my best ones onto here so that I can share them with everyone as I am really quite pleased with the results. 

Because of this I have decided I'd like to start a new series where I'll be writing about everything you need to know about oil and water photography. This will include everything from how to set it all up, the best ways to make the solution, how I edit my images, the best equipment to use, and everything in between. So if you're interested in any of that stay tuned to find out all about it. 

But for those of you reading this who don't know much about this style of photography, I shall give you a quick summary of how it's done to ease you in. It quite simply requires shooting a clear glass container full of water that's had a small amount of oil put into it, from a birds eye view whilst the bowl is suspended above a colourful background. Sounds simple enough right? Getting it spot on though is a completely different story which I'm sure you'll realise if you ever try it yourself!

Today's post showcases one of my absolute favourites that I've taken recently.

I was really pleased with the outcome of this shot, I really like the composition combined with the intense purple colours. I'm also very pleased with how the oil has captured, as the edges of the oil bubbles are extremely vibrant and look a lot like gold rings. I'm also happy with the variation in size of the different bubbles, there's a nice mix of small and large bubbles which I feel really makes the composition. 

I did have to enhance the colours slightly in Photoshop though for this one which I don't usually have to as they didn't capture as vividly purple as I'd hoped, they came out with a bit of a dull grey tone unfortunately which luckily I was able to resolve with some clever Photoshop trickery. I've also got rid of a few excess air bubbles and stray bits of fluff that had crept into the solution just to tidy up the image slighty as it's virtually impossible to prevent these tiny pieces of fluff from getting into the solution and ruining the image.

I've definitely noticed a huge improvement since my last few attempts at oil and water photography, one of which can be seen here, which I think you'll agree with. This is something that I think is due in most part to a couple of pieces of equipment that I've added to my photographic kit. One being a flashgun, the other a new tripod. These two pieces of kit have definitely enhanced my oil and water photography as what I have been able to achieve with them is exactly what I wanted, I haven't had to compromise areas like I did beforehand. 

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this post and love this image as much as I do :)

See you on Monday for the start of my series on how to achieve shots like this!