Orange and Kiwi Soda (not the drink)

[Mike Jordan]

[font=&quot]I've been playing around with soda water and an orange slice for awhile, but I was having trouble with reflections on the round glass bowl I was using... even with my softboxes. So I switched to a light tent. I found a fairly inexpensive one that is 30" square and folds down to a nice flat disk and takes up very little room.

So I gave it a try here with a orange slice in a bowl of soda water. The idea is to get bubbles on the orange. The bubbles show up ok but I'm not happy with the lighting on the orange slice. I don't think I sliced it thin enough, so I'll get out the meat slicer and do some really thin later. But here is a sample of my playing around. Canon 10D with 24-70 2.8L at ISO 100, f22 and 1/100th shutter speed. Lights were 3 Excalibur monolights, one on each sides and behind the light tent.[/font]

Here is a Kiwi I tried as well...

And here is both of them together for contrasting color...

I guess you could drink this afterwards if you wanted.

Mike

 

[Ghoste]

Those are so rad. The first shot is my favorite. Makes me thirsty =D

 

[Shurikem]

Too much of a comerical, but hey for certain people that's a good thing. I think the orange slice is just fin looks like a real one so that's a positive point. good luck for later on.

 

[LaFoto]

Oh my, you still say the light or reflection is not right in the first of the orange slice, and here I go crumbling into nothingness over my first-time, highly amateurish attempts to shoot fruit in somewhat different ways --- slicing them in very thin slices, putting my glass cutting "board" onto four fruit juice cartons as props, setting up six tea-light candles underneath and "grilling" my fruit on that for the photo..........
Why haven't I thought of dropping it into sparkling mineral water? Why not???? Ah well, the contest I took my fruit pics for is gone and in the past and I won it, anyway (was of my local newspaper). So there. I need not complain, either.

But still....
Why has he thought of the mineral water?
And I haven't?
Hmph....Grrr...

 

[mentos_007]

ohhh how cool! those are amazing!... I need to try this

 

[Sand_On_The_Breeze]

Wow, those look great The bubbles really turned out well. Great work!

 

[Mike Jordan]

LaFoto, it was only half an original idea on my part. I've seen pictures people do of dropping things into water and I wanted to do something a little different, so I came up with the idea of soda water. I did flowers first then moved to fruit.

For those that want to try this, it's not that hard. The first problem I had was the bowl I put them in. I wanted to use glass since it's much clearer and easy to clean without stratching. But the only glass I could find of the right size was round bowls. The problem with round was it reflected around the edges too much so I had to make sure the object was right in the middle. I still got reflections from the light though, even in the light tent. So I found some clear plastic containers that were square. These work much better to eleminate the reflections, but I have to be careful because the plastic scratches easy. Also the bubbles stick to the inside plastic and I had to keep wiping it off with a cake spatual.

The biggest problem I had to over come was the bubbles themselves. When you drop something into soda water (carbonated water or mineral water) the bubbles from the carbonation form on the object. This can produce a lot of boyancy to the object and cause the object to float up. When it hits the surface the bubbles burst and the object drops down again, gathers bubbles and heads up. Things I wanted to stay down, wouldn't unless I put a lot of weight on them, which didn't help the picture. It got better as the soda water lost it's fizz, but then I didn't get as many bubbles on the object. I know, I know, life's rough.

I had more things planned but my wife started mixing my soda water with her juice drinks and I've not bought more yet. I really like doing flowers, but it was a real problem with flotation getting them to stay down. Here are some others:

A daffadill:

Here is a strawberry:

And here is a shot of the setup (a smaller version of the bowl that the plastic container is sitting on is what I tried using at first):

Thanks also, Brandon, Shurikem, Mentos and Sand.

Mike

 

[LaFoto]

Well, but that is definitely much more of a set-up than my glass cutting board on juice cartons over 6 tealight candles... But I had great fun photographing my fruit in those very amateurish manners, too!

And, like I said earlier on, my strawberry pic won the local newspaper contest of the month, anyway, soda water or no soda water:

http://www.rotenburger-rundschau.de/index.php?menu=55&command=showartikel&ID=37779&such=Fr%FCchte

 

[Mike Jordan]

LaFoto, just because I used a more elaberate setup doesn't mean it can't be done with less. Your strawberries look pretty good. Good color and exposure. I bet you can do some really neat things with soda water too.

Mike

 

[cmptrdewd]

I'm going to get a BIG glass of water now.

 

[Purified]

Wow, that is so sweet. I am now dying to drop anything and everything I can find into my sierra mist that I'm drinking and take photos of it....

And I am seethingly jealous of your light tent AND your studio lights! AGH, where did you get THOSE!?

NONE of my photography is done without intense thought about what degree my reading lamp should be shining on the object of my photograph, and where it should be taken inside my bedroom, and with what settings on my camera so there is no color casting... and it usually takes 200 shots to get one shot because my conditions are so horrible.

I think I'll stop now. This basically means I am indeed in love with your bubbling fruit.

 

[erniehatt]

Mike all these photos are acredit to you.Excellent work. Ernie
Anyone interested I made a tent using sheets of tracing paper it works very well, and is cheap.

 

[Rob]

Great shots - I'm going to try the flowers in soda thing!!

Rob

 

[Mike Jordan]

Did anyone else ever try to do any of this? I'd love to see what others have come up with.

Mike