Strawberry Splash

Photography - 2017

One of my most popular photos, this refreshing experiment is the one I'm most often asked about. While still in high school at the time, it was quite a shock to my teachers and friends to also see this published in PHOTO News Magazine.

How It Was Done

I set up a mini studio in my kitchen at home with two LED camcorder video lights and a wine glass clamped and duct-taped to a table. One light was reflected off a white background to backlight the glass, the other I hung from a boom stand above the set to light the strawberry and rim of the glass.

The fast shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second was achieved by shooting at a high ISO of 1600. For a good balance of depth of field and lens sharpness, I chose f/8 as the aperture.

After a lot of unsuccessful tries dropping the strawberry into the glass to get a good splash effect (and cleaning up the mess), it was the last shot that I knew was the one.

Strawberry Splash has definitely become one of my most popular photos, reaching thousands of viewers after being published in a well-recognized photography magazine. After joining the PHOTO News Magazine Flickr group and submitting this photo, the editor reached out to me saying they would like to feature it in their Readers Gallery for their summer 2017 issue. I happily sent them the photo and a brief description as requested, and they sent me several complimentary copies.

My photography teacher at the time was very impressed and asked to keep a copy. To my knowledge, she still shows the issue in her class as an example of how important it is to get your work out there for people to see.