Water and balsamic vinegar

Idea wise I think this week's Twitter Photo Challenge will be more difficult than the last. Wind, Water, Fire, Earth... we're surrounded by all that, but how do you photograph Wind for instance?

I don't think -- or at least I don't hope -- that this will be this week's "official" #twphch photo from me. Still I snapped a series of photos like this tonight just to get started thinking about one of the four elements: water.

What you see here is drops of balsamic vinegar hitting the water surface. I wanted to see how brown liquids ("earthy liquids") looked when they hit water, and if they looked good enough to be a good substitute for "earth" in a final picture. Whatever that picture may be.

This test has left me far from conviced. But at least it's a start.

Technical mumbo jumbo:

Lit by a single Speedlight 430 ex, coming in from the left. Behind the water a white sheet of paper's placed to reflect some light back into the water. The flash was set to manual output at 1/64 of max output. The less power the flash uses, the shorter the duration of the blink, and the more "frozen" you can get the drops.

Camera set to manual 1/200 f/36, ISO 1600. The output from the flash was so weak and the aperture was so small that i had to compensate with high ISO.

On the computer I had to add another +1 EV in Adobe Camera Raw. I also desaturated a little, because the balsamic vinegar had started to mix a little too much with the water at the point this picture was taken.

That, some cropping and some sharpening makes the end result a little grainy. But not disturbingly much I think.

See also how this looks when using raspberry juice instead of balsamic vinegar.