Feb 10

Written by:
Friday, February 10, 2012 

 

For week 6, I had the opportunity to try shooting "dancing paint."  What is dancing paint?  Exactly what it sounds like... liquid paint dancing to music!

The setup for this type of shoot is actually more time consuming than the shoot itself but oh so worth it and so much fun!

What you need:

• An old (but working) speaker removed from its case so the output is accessible, plugged into a stereo or other device that plays music
• Black garbage bags, clear plastic, white plastic... whatever you'd like for your base to put the paint on
• Tape
• Water-based paints (dollarama for $1 each and they have TONS of colours... a bottle goes a long way as you're only using one dilluted drop at a time.)
• Studio lights or a bright flash that can be triggered from your camera (can't give a whole lot of details on these as I piggy-backed on another's setup for the lights)
• Tripod and Camera
• Paper towels (LOTS), a garbage can/bag to throw them in, and a small dish of water for wet-wiping
• Nice but not required - remote shutter release but not a wireless one as if there's any lag-time, you'll miss the beats and therefore the shots

To set up:

• Get yourself set up in a place where paint splatters don't matter... they are water based but can still stain white walls and fabric so be sure to cover the surrounding area if there's anything you'd be worried about getting stained.
• Hook up the speaker to the stereo, play some music with good base beats, and press your hand to the speaker output to be sure you can feel the vibration.  Remember, the louder you play the music, the more vibrations you'll get!
• Once you've confirmed all is working, cover the speaker tightly with your plastic (garbage bag, etc.) and tape down to the sides to be sure you've got it stretched like a drum top.  This is where the paint will go so you want the plastic smooth and free of holes so that the paint can dance with the vibrations from the speaker.
• Lay the speaker so the output/plastic is facing upward and flat and on something appropriate to the height of your tripod and setup a backdrop that you don't mind getting dirty.  Plastic works well except that it can sometimes cause reflections from the flash so this is a trial and error to see what works as well.
• Set your camera to a very narrow fstop (my camera's max is f22 so that's what I used), ISO 200, and in this case, shutter speed was 1/250 sec.  Meter your lights and set those accordingly for proper exposure.  Remember that its the flash and NOT the shutterspeed that captures the frozen paint in the air so don't be tempted to crank the shutterspeed.
• Set up your camera on the tripod and hold a pen or your finger or something in the approximate center or slightly further back from the speaker output (you will try to center the paint but as it dances it tends to jump up and backward a bit) and focus on the pen.  Lock your focus at this point by setting it to manual focus and then don't bump the tripod or move the speaker.  If this happens, re-focus... even a slight bump will throw your focus off and you don't want 50 images out of focus.

• Next mix a small amount of paint with a little bit of water and stir well (this will be trial and error... too thick, the paint won't dance, too thin, it goes EVERYWHERE as soon as the first beat thumps!  Then place a bit of paint about the size of a dime onto your plastic where you did your focus earlier (use 2-3 different colours for fun results.)

• Then crank the tunes and start snapping to the beat!  This is the most difficult part as your timing is important but if you get into it, you can get some really neat captures. If you're using multiple colours at once, you'll find that the paint will only last for a part of one song before you'll need to pause the music, wipe off all the paint and add new drops (depending on the colour combinations, it gets to look like icky mud after a while as the paints blend together.)  This is the reason for the papertowels, both wet and dry.

Here are a few of my results:

And my favorite of the set: