Behind the Shot
So this is a setup shot taken to show what I did to take the previous, "One Word" shot.
This was a real world, practical setup to create the shot. No heavy-handed "Photoshop" work was done to create the image of the planet and word inside the drop of water.
To do this you need to set a lot up before you take the shot. Three things need to be lined up for a successful shot.
1) The subject and camera need to be lined up so you can see the drop of water on the end of the blade of grass in this case. Distance for the magnification and height to just see the thing.
2) Then I bring in the background/refraction subject. That needs to be lit harshly, yet no spill over light onto the drop of water. I use a focusable hand held flashlight. The angle of this light is very important.
But the distance of the background is something that you need to figure out by moving it up/down, left/right and forward and back. Each direction makes a small change in the refracted image inside the drop of water.
The background can be anything you want it to be. For the image I created I used a restriction free image that NASA released to the world a while ago. Its called, "The Blue Marble."
I then drew the letters for the word (a couple times actually to get the size right) and colored them in and cut them out using a razor blade from the single stick labels I made them out of. Then I stuck them onto the image.
This is a real image that was created in a practical way. Not all done in photoshop. Hell, I don't even own that software.
There are plenty of videos on YouTube covering this technique, just search Water Droplet Refraction.
Behind the Shot
So this is a setup shot taken to show what I did to take the previous, "One Word" shot.
This was a real world, practical setup to create the shot. No heavy-handed "Photoshop" work was done to create the image of the planet and word inside the drop of water.
To do this you need to set a lot up before you take the shot. Three things need to be lined up for a successful shot.
1) The subject and camera need to be lined up so you can see the drop of water on the end of the blade of grass in this case. Distance for the magnification and height to just see the thing.
2) Then I bring in the background/refraction subject. That needs to be lit harshly, yet no spill over light onto the drop of water. I use a focusable hand held flashlight. The angle of this light is very important.
But the distance of the background is something that you need to figure out by moving it up/down, left/right and forward and back. Each direction makes a small change in the refracted image inside the drop of water.
The background can be anything you want it to be. For the image I created I used a restriction free image that NASA released to the world a while ago. Its called, "The Blue Marble."
I then drew the letters for the word (a couple times actually to get the size right) and colored them in and cut them out using a razor blade from the single stick labels I made them out of. Then I stuck them onto the image.
This is a real image that was created in a practical way. Not all done in photoshop. Hell, I don't even own that software.
There are plenty of videos on YouTube covering this technique, just search Water Droplet Refraction.