splash dynamics

It's funny the way water moves.  When you freeze the motion of water in a picture, it looks weird because that's not how we see it with our eyes.  When you slow it down with a slow shutter speed and blur it, it looks weird that way too.  Because that's not the way our eyes see it.  This morning I'd planned on taking pictures with a buddy of mine but it was raining.  I told him I'd decided not to go and he said he was gonna go without me, so I changed my mind.  I went.

So here we are in my truck ripping holes in Wal-Mart bags to poke the lenses of our cameras through.  It actually worked.  Only the very end of the lens was getting wet.  And it was kind of just sprinkling anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

It was nasty out there though.  No sunshine, very cloudy, rain, cold, it was actually hard to find some inspiration.  We went walking around with no clue what we'd end up taking pictures of.  So we walked down a path around this pond. . .made it to the end and neither one of us had taken a picture yet.  We turned around and were headed back to the truck and came up on this puddle of water.  So I put my camera (in the Wal-Mart bag), down in the water and snapped away.  I had to take several shots to get a good one of a splash.

The interesting thing about this picture is that it shows what water does after it splashes.  The drop comes down, hits the water and makes the classic crown shape splash.  After that, the water raises up and crashes against itself.  This picture shows that when it splashes against itself, it evidently hits hard enough to shoot up in the air.  Now this little bubble looking thing is maybe the size of golf ball.  So it's splashing up maybe 6 inches.  But what we see is a drop of water falling from the tree, hitting the water and the water splashing.  Our eyes can't catch the action of it causing this little miniature explosion after the original drop hits the water.  I love it!!  I went out not having a clue what to even take a picture of, and I came back with a better understanding of splash dynamics.  I'm a better person.  You're a better person if you're reading this.

So next time you're thinking about going out to take pictures, or to sit down and write a song, or to paint a picture, or do anything, try not to look for an outcome.  Just the the outcome come out.  HA!!!  I made myself laugh just now with that.  Awesome.  Sitting at my computer at 3:24 in the morning laughing at myself.  I'm cool.

Thanks!!