Liquid Art & Droplet Photography

One Ordinary Drop of Water: Liquid Art & Droplet Photography

It certainly takes great skill and very good equipment to create these frozen-in-time "water sculptures", in every captured frame revealing the inherent energy and the beautiful dynamics of flowing, cascading and dripping water:

Some artists decide to substitute water with more viscous liquids, which leads to even more psychedelic, "lava lamp"-like effects. But more often than not, simply playing with ambient color and light distribution is enough to produce an outstanding effect. In this article we will try to cover the full variety of high-speed liquid photography and the excitement of resulting abstract-modernist compositions.



Luiz Luxvich makes startlingly clear images of splashing water


This master of liquid photography lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has the most fantastic gallery online, bursting with variety of colorful creations:

Amazingly, even without any added coloring, pure water looks simply great... like in these examples from the French photographer:

Liquid Sculptures by Martin Waugh

Martin Waugh, of Liquid Sculpture, is perhaps the most famous artist in liquid photography sub-genre. His works are justly praised as "full of fun, whimsy and wonder"

Water Kiss!

More Surreal Colored Drops

These droplets seem to have acquired a life of their own. The fluid forms and smoothly flowing into each other colors remind me of the similarly fluid illustrations by the famous 1950s science fiction artist Richard M. Powers.

Photographs by Fotoopa, liquid art master from Belgium, are one million times better than a lava lamp, and significantly more mesmerizing:

Got Milk? Spill it, Drip it, Swirl it! (artistically speaking, of course)

A Milk Drop:

Drops of food coloring come together to become an artistically-pleasing set, by Peter Ovesny:

A Tentacle! -

This is not mercury, not even melting ice - just water... splendid water! Woke up one morning, saw this thing crawling toward me across the sink... decided to go back to bed and sleep it off -

Coffee Meets Milk

Look at the gorgeous "liquid art" photography by Irene Muller, transforming coffee and milk into a mysterious whole, bringing them to entirely new heights of artistic expression. With her permission, here are some samples of this highly delicate art:

Welcome your own personal caffeine octopus:

You want eggs with that? -

Blueberry Milkshake:

Suspended...

For more great high-speed photography of colored water drops

The following is a 3D rendering, but still very impressive:

Cold Shower Splendor

Next time you catch someone creeping from behind and overturning a bucket of cold water over somebody's head, don't get too upset; perhaps they are just (very selfishly) trying to take a memorable picture... Like this one, for example:

This looks like a flowing water cape!

These interesting water shapes happened as a result of blowing up water-filled balloons. What lengths some photographers would go to, just to make a cool picture! -

While the turbulent flows of water would easily produce mesmerizing effect in high-speed photography, the simple falling of individual droplets - one after another - can also produce interesting results:

The Dynamics of The Fall of a Droplet

The following shots trace the physics of water's flow in a form of individual caplets, seemingly quite complex

In Your Face!

Liquid photography is often used in promotional images and advertisements:

Potpourri of Droplets

The Universe seem to be reflected in a single drop, or in a necklace of droplets:

Beautiful drops of water, just sitting there and waiting to be photographed:

In this series we find perhaps the most artistic presentation of droplets and bubbles ever made:

Most of the effects seen here are caused by the surface tension of common water, as formation and flowing forms of giant soap bubbles clearly demonstrate:

Written By Awais Ali