After my first attempt at photographing water balloons right after they pop, I thought I'd try coloring the water. I actually tried this a couple weeks ago; I had everything set up and ready to go only to find out that my knockoff remote wasn't working. So I ordered the real $15 one from Nikon (hopefully it'll be worth the 3-4x price tag, it definitely feels better made). I made about 15 of the balloons with various combinations of different colors and amounts of food coloring. The setup was piece of clear fishing line hanging from our gazebo that I used to hang the balloons, a Nikon D60 on tripod about 10 feet away from the balloons (enough distance to prevent water from splashing all over it), two Sunpak 333's on stands at 1/16 power to the right and left of the balloon, and a 300fps airsoft pistol with black BB's. I had to adjust the height of the flashes for each shot and make sure the balloon was still in the frame, and I still used the remote and my trusty timing to take the shots in lack of a sensor, but I was fine with the results. The only real differences from last time were adding an additional flash and using black BB's. I had forgotten I only used one flash last time and wondered why I didn't stop the aperture more down this time, but that could be due to either 1) the flashes not being as close, although I did zoom them to 50mm for some shots. Although, moving them any closer would've just gotten the stands and flashes wetter than they already did. Or 2) the colored water probably doesn't light up as well, which is why using two flashes would produce only slightly brighter results. I did vary the aperture on some shots from f/9-f/13. You can check the EXIF on the shots I uploaded to Flickr by clicking on the name of the camera used in the upper right under my name.
Protip: use new balloons. I've been using really old ones and a lot of them are very stretchy. As a result, about half of the balloons I used didn't pop, but instead spun around and sprayed water everywhere out of a small hole or bounced the BB back at me.
It still made for interesting shots.
Even when I had the airsoft pistol very close, some of BB's either bounced off or only pierced the balloon without popping it.
Just to show you how stubborn some of these balloons, here's one that had two BB's lodged in the side of it. I would usually try to shoot the balloon even after one BB only pierced it to see if I could get an interesting shot or at least stop it from spraying onto me, but that tatic failed here.
Here's a nice shot that I didn't think made the cut for Flickr, mostly since it looks partially out of focus.
And another shot from a balloon that was pierced from the first shot and I managed to shoot a second time.
I also had the idea of putting a balloon inside another balloon. This required putting one balloon inside another before filling them up, then filling up and tying the inside balloon before filling up and tying off the outside one. The idea is to have two different colors of water or just dye the inside for a cool effect. Unfortunately, I forgot to prepare a lot of these and only had time to make one before it got too dark. And, of course, it didn't pop.
At least that leaves something for next time. Here's the shots I uploaded to Flickr.
This last shot was from shooting a balloon a second time after the first BB only pierced it. I told you there might be an interesting effect.
All photos on this blog that are not on Flickr and as a result do not have a specified license are "All Rights Reserved." Please contact me for use - as you can imagine, I'm usually fine with bloggers using them.
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