Here is the behind-the-scenes for the Motion freeze shot glass shooting. For details of the self-built system I used, please refer to my Drop flash trigger article.
This session was mainly to test my newly implemented drop-flash-trigger, which allows to time falling object very precisely and fire a connected flash. The main subject here was quickly found in my kitchen - a shot glass from a local Greek restaurant (and I actually have no recollection how it ended up in my kitchen).
After building my set, I started with letting small objects drop into the glass from a certain height and adjusted the delay until the splashes looked like what I had in mind. With a tool like this, one can structure the shoot in two parts: first adjusting without any cleaning, then the real shoot with cleaning in between, but repeatable and reliably good looking results.
The setup
I wanted to let most of the light come from the sides, since this creates the best illumination and reflections for the camera looking from a 90 degree angle. One of the flashes connected to my flash-trigger system and the other in slave sync mode. The background I wanted to be completely black, so that full attention is drawn towards the splashes of the liquid. A slightly rounded piece of fleece was perfect for that. To steer the light of the flashes, I attached a rolled piece of black foam to them - which reduced the amount of light falling onto the background. I had to cover against light from the window because of the relatively long shutter time of 1 sec (at day-time).
The results were really not stunning, until I added a light source from below. But with this the glass plate was way too bright and also details from below the glass plate became suddenly visible. The solution was a piece of fleece, attached under the glass with a tiny hole were the shot glass stood. This way, light was streaming into the glass, but leaving the rest of the glass plate dark.
