The past few days hurricane Hermine inspired me to experiment with some abstract techniques in the studio. Hurricane Hermine was a huge rain event where I live and capturing a few droplets seemed the perfect way to illustrate some of its effects.

This is a shoot I researched to help get out of the box with my thinking and boost creativity. I was working in studio and here is the general set up. The image consists of a mixture of water and oil in a glass container. This container is situated on plexiglass, elevated around 12 inches with a multi- colored cloth beneath.  There are plenty of video tutorials on line demonstrating this technique.  Although the technique did have its challenges, some of the results I found to be very inspiring thus the name of this post Hermine inspired.

The biggest challenge was finding a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the moving water. To create the bubbles, the mixture had to agitated by either gentle moving the container or stirring the mixture of water and oil. However, the agitation created movement of the water and oil causing images to be blurred at lower shutter speeds. On the plus side, it forced me to really work with the Shutter/Aperature/ISO matrix to get some good shots. As with many shoots the more images you take the greater the probability of succeeding.

Thanks for reading and I hope the next time you have some crazy weather in your area, you let your creative juices flow and make some art!

Hermine Inspired Images

“Bubbled Over”

“Cellular Activity”

Check out more of my work at susanmcanany.com.