LIQUEFIED Julian Teh
Index Introduction and Inspirations Pre-production Working Out a Method My Set-up Shoot Proposal One Shoot Notes Contact Sheets Image Selection Editing Process
Introduction and Inspirations The ‘portfolio’ assignment, essentially an extension of the previous ‘negotiated studies’ assignment but with a focus on portfolio development, had me stretching for ideas. Then, early in the final term of year 12, Richard showed us the ‘miniature landscape’ works of Kim Keever. At first I thought they must be paintings - such odd ‘skies’ couldn’t possibly be real, and they did not appear to be edited. Only when Richard revealed Keever’s technique did it make any sense - they were shot in miniature, underwater, in an aquarium. The odd skies were actually blossoms of paint hanging over the model mountains, like hazy storm-clouds.
Shoot Proposal Two Shoot Notes Contact Sheets Image Selection Editing Process Artist’s Statement “Not Quite a Shoot” Shoot Notes Contact Sheets Image Selection Editing Process Image Presentation Printing and Portfolio Inclusion Artist’s Statement
At the time, I was still shopping around for ideas to focus on for my final assignment. I had finally, in the negotiated studies assignment, covered my favourite subjects (birds) and felt like I had done so adequately enough that revisiting them would be a waste of a valuable chance for feedback. I needed something new.
Keever’s work intrigued me. The ‘clouds’ he created were quite beautiful. But the decision to pursue this idea was not made until, in the end, I forgot Keever’s name and had to search for “paint in water photography” on google. This turned up some astonishing results - the work of Mark Mawson and Alberto Seveso.
Working Out a Method There was one immediate problem with the plan. There was very little information available on set ups for this kind of photography - the two main people in the field, Mawson and Seveso, make a living from their work and thus are not inclined to bandy their techniques around the web. I knew from Keever’s work a little of the process (dropping paint into a water-filled aquarium), but what lighting rig was Mawson using to get perfect black backgrounds and bright paint swirls. How was Seveso getting those mixed colours?
Keever Mawson Seveso These photographs assured me that this concept was worth pursuing. The beautiful colours and forms were captivating. I had to give it a try. Kim Keever’s set-up I could tell from the lie of the shadows that Mawson was using two, or perhaps three lights for many of his photographs in ‘Aqueous Floreau”. Multi-speedlite set ups are difficult to control, and when dealing with something that moves so fast as paint in water, the recycle time of ordinary flashes would not be practical. I assumed, therefore, he was using some kind of high-speed flash unit such as the Broncolor system. I knew
My Set-up
He was shooting through an aquarium, and he was using some kind of black background. At this point, I thought I might as well give up - I had only one speedlite, and I definitely had nothing as high-tech as a Broncolor. Then, in a great stroke of luck, I stumbled across two things almost simultaneously. The first, Mark Mawson’s youtube channel, showing a creative video of paint spreading out through the water - a video version of his still-photography work. This meant that he must be using modelling lights instead of flashes. The second, one, tiny, photograph of Mawson’s set up, popped in almost as an afterthought to an online interview he gave. This gave me the starting point for my own set up.
Once I had the basic idea, formulating a set up was not overly difficult. I knew I needed several things:
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An aquarium Two or three identical light sources Paint
The aquarium was fairly easy to find, and I picked up a nice glass one at Petstock for $70 - I would normally shy from spending so much on one item for a single project, but in this case, I knew the quality of the aquarium’s glass would affect the quality of my photographs, and decided it was worth the expense. The identical light sources were solved for me quite quickly and easily. My father and I had just bought matching LED-Lenser H14s, and I discovered that the lights and battery packs could be detached from the head-bands with relative ease, allowing them to be positioned as I wanted them. These lights are both powerful and adjustable, so I could also decide how focused a beam of light I wanted.
Mark Mawson’s studio set-up
Paint was the final hurdle - and after looking at the price of paint, I considered once again dropping the project. In the end, I decided to use a substitute - milk. With virtually the same density as paint, I could simply add food colouring and splash away to my heart’s content with any number of colours, without breaking the bank.
Shoot Proposal One
Shooting Notes
Since for this assignment I would essentially be doing a new ‘shoot’ every ten minutes, I decided to base my plans around achieving certain styles of paint-in-water photography. The first thing I wanted to try was the technique for getting the smaller, twisted, flower-like shapes I had seen in some of Mawson’s work:
The first shoot was very much a test. We were shooting at night to help with getting the desired black background to the photos, and I had everything set up, some good colours mixed (bright red and blue), but I didn’t know how the milk would interact with the water. Would I get the same effects as the professionals? Before wasting an entire tankful of water, I grabbed a glass from the kitchen, and using a little pipette I had bought for the purpose, I dropped a little milk. The effect was perfect - exactly what I had been hoping for, and it looked just like the results of the photographers I was trying to emulate. We stepped it up to the aquarium - room lights off, LED-Lensers on, my mother to help me with the pouring as I held down the shutter, and we were almost good to go. Using the bright red handle of a screwdriver I had lying around to lock focus, we started the shoot. We began with tiny droplets from the pipette, using blue milk. The small droplets hit the surface of the water, and immediately twist themselves into complex shapes, as the denser milk interacts with the pressure of the water.
My plan to achieve this effect would be to use a pipette to place individual droplets on the water’s surface. As the heavy milk meets with the water, the milk should coil around itself as it interacts with the water pressure, producing the desired effect. This would need to be shot from a very short distance away (using my longest focal length of 40mm), using the set-up described above.
We did a series of these, until the water in the aquarium was too cloudy to continue. We tipped the water out onto the garden (another pro of using milk over paint; eco-friendly!) and refilled for another go.
Contact Sheet
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Image Selection
Editing Process
The above selection is only a portion of the image sequences I shot for this concept. The total numbers several hundred. It was, however, not very difficult for me to narrow down the selection to just a few for editing. Many were soft due to using manual focus in some of the drops. The main things I was looking for in the photographs I selected were sharpness (difficult to achieve; as I was forced to use a large aperture to get enough light, resulting in DOF issues), and the interest within the shapes and colours. Some drops were just out of focus beyond hope of recovery, and others were simply not very interesting in terms of shape.
This is the raw file from image one. The edges of the aquarium are clearly visible, as is remnant milk from the previous drop.
The raw file is turned 180 degrees to give the impression that the droplets are dispersing upwards rather than downwards. I felt this provided more interest in the photograph, and despite being artifically contrived, looked more ‘natural’.
Editing Process
The image is cropped to a vertical to focus attention on the drops.
Editing Process
Using a smaller, soft-edged brush, the black areas are refined.
An exposure adjustment layer is added, and exposure increased dramatically to make viewing the areas of imperfection easier. Using a large hard-edged brush in Photoshop, the background of the photo is painted over. This is done to remove distracting background elements, such as the smoke-like remnants of the previous drops and the edges of the aquarium.
The finished image, with minor adjustments to brightness and contrast.
Final Image: Blue Flowers Canon 7D Canon 17-40mm f/4 L USM @27mm 1/250th of a second f/7.1 ISO800
Editing Process
The raw file of the first image in a sequence of three
The image is flipped 180 degrees to give it some interest and to attract attention
Editing Process
An exposure adjustment layer is added, and exposure increased significantly to make the imperfections in the image clearly visible.
Using a large hard-edged brush, the majority of the background is painted black. The edges of the shape are tidied up using a smaller softedged brush.
Editing Process The image after background replacement, with exposure turned up to make sure no areas were missed. For the images in this sequence I elected to leave the surface layer of paint (now at the bottom of the image) as a sort of ‘platform’ or ‘stage’ for the rising shape, as I felt it added to the visual impact of the image.
The final image. After deactivating the highlight layer, a very large soft-edged brush at 20% opacity was used to make the outer edges of the puddle less obvious.
Final Image: Blue Flowers Sequence 1/3 Canon 7D Canon 17-40mm f/4 L USM @17mm 1/200th of a second f/5.6 ISO800
Shoot Proposal Two My second area of interest for this assignment was the “colour plume� that Seveso (and Mawson, for the most part) focus on in their work. In this style, the milk, paint, ink or oil forms a large spout of colour, often with multiple colours mixing for interest:
My plan to achieve this effect would be to pour a decent quantity of the milk into the aquarium, and shoot in burst mode to capture as much of the process as possible. Unlike the previous technique, which focused on detail in a tiny area of the aquarium, this technique requires essentially the whole aquarium to be in the field of view, so shooting would take place from further away and at a lesser focal length using the set-up previously described.
Shooting Notes IMG_0954.jpg
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This time we decided to try with a single big drop of milk, pouring in the contents of a teacup. We also decided to use two colours, red and blue, at once to get some interesting mixing effects. This went extraordinarily well, and the mixing shapes provided some fascinating frames, as well as a beautiful lilac colour from the mixing blue and red. The only problem with this technique is that only one drop is possible before the aquarium needs to be emptied. The workaround for this is that the milk moves so fast through the water that every 1/320th of a second is different, allowing a variety of keepers from each shoot. Despite the labour intensity of this project, I was very pleased with the results from the experimental shoot, and was inspired to continue over the following evenings. The next few evenings of shooting used the same camera settings; lighting etc. The only significant change was the method of dropping the milk. In the first shoot, my mother had poured out the two colours not-quite-together, resulting in the colours mixing approximately halfway down the tank. I then elaborated on that by pouring both colours at the same time in the same place, so they mixed immediately. This resulted in A paler, but still very attractive lavender purple with red and blue flourishes out to the sides. Another technique I trialled was using a funnel to pour the milk through, to eliminate the disc-shaped puddle that was forming on the water’s surface. I quite like that, as it provided a sort of ‘platform’ for the milk to rise up and out from, but the results from the funnel experiments were equally attractive.
Image Selection Using ‘shutter-spam’ has its pros and cons. The pro is that you probably won’t miss any ‘defining moments’. The con is that you then have several hundred images to sort through later. I don’t really mind that so much, I find it relaxing. Which is lucky, because I had a lot of sorting to do. I ended up selecting two or three images from each of the drops, a few frames apart, to give each an adequate difference in shape or colour to its predecessor. This also allowed me to build short series of three images, much like in the ‘repeated moments’ assignment we carried out last year - showing change over time in still photographs.
Editing Process
The raw file. Notice that at the base of the plume, the black tip of a funnel is noticeable. Pouring both colours through the funnel at once resulted in the pastel shades, and eliminated a ‘stage’ for the base of the plume, which I felt would be an interesting experiment.
I selected these two drops as being the most pleasing:
The raw file is flipped 180 degrees.
Editing Process
The image is cropped to a vertical, focusing right in on the plume. The composition and presentation are to be adjusted later, for now getting in close to the shape is most important.
An exposure adjustment layer is added and activated, to show the area of background to be replaced.
Editing Process
Using the same process as the previous shoots, the background is paintstakingly painted over.
The funnel’s tip is an undesirable element in the photo, but simply painting black over it makes the end of the plume square and obvious. The clone tool is used to create a tip for the plume, based on the contours of the plume.
Editing Process
The final version of the image. The camera noise is quite noticeable, so a high-pass NR filter is applied. Normally I avoid this as it gives a flat, painting-like appearance, but that effect is most suitable for this subject.
Two more files from the same sequence, shot just hundredths of a second apart, are edited in exactly the same way, and placed together on a single background to show a linear progression.
Final Image: Pastel Explosion Sequence Canon 7D Canon 17-40mm f/4 L USM @17mm 1/320th of a second f/5.6 ISO800
Editing Process
Editing Process
The raw file. For this shoot I chose not to use a funnel, and allowed a stain to spread at the base of the plume.
The angle of the pour resulted in the plume being not quite square with its base on the water’s surface. To counteract this, the image is rotated a small amount.
The raw file is flipped 180 degrees.
Exposure adjustment layer added and activated.
Editing Process
Editing Process
Using the by-now familiar painting process, the background is replaced.
The top-left corner of the plume has slightly stark edges, so a large soft-edged brush at low opacity is used to darken them, allowing the plume to appear as if it is melting into the background.
The full image after background replacement.
The file is placed next two two others from the same shoot, edited identically, and presented in the same way as the previous sequence.
Final Image: Liquefied Sequence Canon 7D Canon 17-40mm f/4 L USM @17mm 1/200th of a second f/5.6 ISO800
“Not Quite a Shoot” - Creative Editing Techniques I don’t really count this as a third shoot idea, as I came up with it while playing with images in post production, but the result was good enough for me to want to include it in my portfolio, so it is worth documenting its creation in my journal.
IMG_1459 Canon 7D Canon 17-40mm f/4L USM @17mm 1/320th of a second f/5.6 ISO800
‘Blue Flowers’ Canon 7D Canon 17-40mm f/4L USM @27mm 1/250th of a second f/7.1 ISO800
Editing Process
The raw file of IMG_1459 is loaded into Adobe Photoshop cs6
Using the rectangular selection tool, the right-hand-side of the image is copied, reversed, and pasted onto the lefthand-side.
Editing Process
The blue shape is more complimentary than the red, so the blue shape from the left-hand-side of the original image is brought to the front, copied, reversed and pasted onto the right-hand-side.
The background of the image is painted black as in previous shoots.
Editing Process
The top edges of the blue spires are painted over using a large soft-edged brush at low opacity, to help them fade into the background.
As a final touch to complete the image, one of the shapes from the image ‘Blue Flowers’ is copied, pasted in the same position on both sides, and its colour balance modified to provide interest. Final Image: Volcanic Flower Garden Canon 7D | Canon 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17, 27mm | 1/320th, 1/250th of a second | f/5.6, f/7.1 | ISO800 Dual setting information accounts for two separate images used
Image Presentation
Printing and Portfolio Inclusion
I tossed and turned on how best to present the images I’d taken - I felt they were each different enough from one another to warrant presentation one-by-one, but this would take up a lot of space. Even online, people would get bored after flicking through a few similar images.
The primary purpose of this assignment was to create a body of work for inclusion into the portfolio - the culmination of two year’s classwork and extracurricular photography, the cream of the crop, for presentation to any employers or art schools that students might be applying for.
I therefore decided to showcase the images together, to highlight the changes between each frame. In this manner, by placing a series of images in a line, a sense of change over time could also be conveyed.
I decided to print A3 for my portfolio, and having selected a number of other images from my past work, set about printing them. This is where I ran into problems.
There’s a bit of psychology behind humans and the number three. For some reason, we lean heavily on the number and appear drawn to it. Studies have been done showing groups of three objects are found more engaging than other numbers. We use three everywhere - it’s enough to be interesting, but not too many to be confusing.
The Epson R2880 in the photography lab, after working perfectly for the first few prints, began radically modifying colours. The reds in Volcanic Flower Garden became peach-orange, for instance.
This natural affinity to the number three settled me on presentation of my images in groups of three. It seems natural, complete to a subconscious level, and engages viewers.
After much messing about with settings, inks, screen calibrations and a multitude of settings, the only viable workaround for the problem was to print small images, and adjust the on-screen image to what I was seeing on the paper. This took an age, but eventually I was able to produce the correct results. The following images have now been included in my portfolio for submission to the ANU school of art.
Artist’s Statement In this, my final body of work for Year 12, my aim was to test a new, under-studied and fascinating technique to produce series of photographs that are unique. The nature of the technique ensures that every frame is impossible to replicate. I felt that this was an appropriate way to finish my year - the creation of something that is entirely mine. Also appropriate is that the level of technical knowledge, analysis and effort required in planning, setting up and carrying out shoots, and in post production editing, to create these images surpasses any of my previous work. I believe it to be a fitting demonstration of what, I feel, has been a two-year period of substantial growth in my photographic prowess, thanks to the advice, critique and encouragement provided by my exceptional teacher and classmates.