Everyone is deeply connected to the music. No matter if someone is a kid or a teenager or an adult or even an elder, everyone loves music. Sometimes music makes us happy, sometimes it triggers an old memory, sometimes it makes us sing, sometimes it make us dance but almost every time listening to our favorite music puts us in a good mood.
Listening to music while doing photography is always good but do you know that we can also do extraordinary photography using the music beats and some colors? So get ready, we are going to create beautiful color sculptures using a high speed photography technique. You should be able to learn how to create stunning color sculptures using the sound.
Like other high speed photography, this photography is also not easy as everything happened very fast and if you miss it, you need to do a lot of clean-up before you are ready to take another shot and also you’ll not be able to create the same shot which you just missed.
Luckily we have MIOPS Smart Camera Trigger high speed photography trigger that can trigger at the perfect moment and save us a lot of hassle.
© Ramakant Sharda – http://ClickManic.com
What you need:
The very first thing you need is a setup with a music player, a speaker and a rubber sheet. We are going to put a rubber sheet on the speaker and put some drops of color on it. When you play sound, colors will jump because of the vibration in the rubber sheet and it’ll create beautiful sculptures.
We need following things to create this setup:
1. A good music system.
2. Speaker (5-6 inches in size)
3. Long wire to connect speaker to the music system
4. A plastic box that can fit the speaker
5. A rubber sheet (I used a black color swimming cap)
6. Velcro and rubber based adhesive
© Ramakant Sharda – http://ClickManic.com
So, take the speaker, attach a long wire to it and fit it in the plastic box. Now take your rubber sheet and cut a round piece (around two inches bigger than the speaker). Cut small pieces of Velcro and paste it on the rubber sheet using rubber based adhesive. Paste another side of Velcro on the plastic box. Please be careful while making this setup and use proper safety measures or it’s better to have a professional who can create it for you.
We are going to put this rubber sheet on the speaker using Velcro so we can detach it and clean it after every shot. You also need some low-frequency sound beats to play in music system. You can get these beats online or you can create yourself using free software available online.
When this setup is ready, you need some more things like background, camera, lens, tripod, flashes and MIOPS sound activated camera trigger. I choose a black background for my shots but you can choose any according to your taste.
Any camera that has a manual mode and can fire external flashes can be used for this type of photography. For the lens, it’s advisable to use 100mm or bigger focal length lens so your camera is far enough from colors and safe from splashes. You will need two flashes with a black background but if your background is white or any other color, you may need extra flashes for the background.
You also need colors to put on the speaker. You can use acrylic colors but make sure you choose bright shades. Also, arrange some small plastic spoons or syringe to put colors on the speaker. And of course, you’ll need a room that can be darkened and you are allowed to make modern art using color splashes on the walls of the room.
Setup:
Okay, your music system is ready to play low-frequency beats, you’ve put the rubber sheet on the speaker and also placed the background a few feet away from the speaker. You have 5-6 different shades of acrylic colors ready with small spoons.
Now set your camera on a tripod. Place two flashes with low power at forty-five degree angle on both sides, the power of flashes should be 1/32 or less and make sure you cover your flashes with plastic bags. One flash will work as main and other will be work as fill. Power of fill flash should be half of the main flash. So, if your main flash is at 1/32 power, other will be at 1/64.
Camera settings:
– Aperture: f/11 – f/16 for deeper depth of field.
– Shutter speed – 1/250 or whatever is flash sync speed in your camera.
– ISO – 100 or lowest possible according to the light.
Now attach MIOPS Smart camera trigger to your camera and use it in sound mode. Set sensitivity to 30-40 and delay to 50-100 milliseconds. These settings are not typical, you need to change it according to your requirements. Like for delay, it depends whether you want to capture a short size sculpture, you need to set less time for delay but if you want to capture a long sculpture, you need to set the delay for some more time.
As always, you have two options for using the sound trigger. The first option is to control your camera using this trigger and you’ll be free to play the sound.
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Take impossible photos by turning your camera into a high-speed capture device!
Another option is that you can set your camera on bulb mode and use the trigger to fire flashes according to the settings. In this case, you need to do two works together. First, open the shutter and then play the sound. Both methods are good for high speed paint photography, it totally up to you.
Work Flow:
When your setup is ready, take some rest because you’ll be very tired by now. Make sure to fasten the caps of color bottles before taking rest. Okay, I am just joking.
Now you need to put different colors on the rubber sheet and play sound. The sound will vibrate the rubber sheet and colors will jump up. It’s advisable to use water first for experiments and set delay time and also the volume of the speaker. Always remember that high volume will create bigger splash and density of color will also change the size and shape of the splash.
Well, start creating beautiful color sculptures and share your pictures with us. In the next article, we are going to share one more high speed photography ideas using this same setup so keep in touch.
Ramakant Sharda is an author, iOS App publisher, passionate photographer and a MIOPS Ambassador based in the beautiful “Pink City” of India, known as Jaipur. His work has been published in various magazines, newspapers, and blogs. He has published three Coffee Table Books, he writes about photography and also teaches photography in his workshops. Check out his website http://ClickManic.com to see the masterpieces created by him or download his free app for iPhone and iPad “30 Days to an Ace Photographer“.