Wednesday 20 March 2013

Water wigs - fun with splashing balloons

Tim Tadder is a professional photographer in California who created quite a splash with his wonderful water wig photos – created without image manipulation! The current issue of the German magazine c't Digitale Fotografie has a feature on Tim Tadder who freely explains his approach.

The basics are very simple and well known for high-speed photos: a dark studio, camera shutter open and flashes with short flash duration to freeze the movement, triggered at an opportune moment. The colours come from colour filters in front of the flash lights. The 'wigs' are simply water-filled balloons either dropped on the models heads (sic!) or for the lengthy ones, oblong balloons that can be shaped and then are burst by an assistant with a needle.

Tim points out some important points to remember if you'd like to try this yourself:
  • Make sure your equipment is splash-proof and have the model stand in some recipient for the water!
  • Make your trials for the set-up with some non-living item, most models get impatient quite quickly with balloons being dropped on their head :-)
  • Bald heads work best for this approach.