Experiments with food dye......

Glasses of fire
Originally uploaded by YvonneSherry

Some months back I read an article in a photography magazine with tips on how to create an image such as this. At the time I had only just started using my camera, and my first attempts failed miserably. However at the beginning of January I decided to try this again and this time the photo was greatly improved (although still quite different from the image I had originally envisaged).

Since posting this picture to flickr several people have asked how I was able to slant the water and yet keep the glasses straight. So for anyone interested here are the main steps: -

1) Tape the base of the glasses to thick card or wood.
2) Raise one end of the card/ wood using anything to hand.
3) Fill the glasses with water and have your camera set up ready to go
4) Drop an equal amount of dye into each glass (blue food dye was used for this photo) and quickly take the photo while the dye is still mixing with the water
5) The rest of the effect was achieved using Photoshop. This involved straightening the image, cropping and inverting the filter.

The image I had been trying to achieve involved the dye streaming down from the top of the glass through the water creating spirals. However, short of being an Octopus it is pretty hard for one person to do this even with the assistance of a remote. A second or two hesitation to drop the dye in each glass meant that the dye had already collected in the bottom of the glass. However using blue food dye (which when inverted looked a burnt orange colour) and letting the dye mix with water at the bottom of the glass resulted in a 'fire like' look. A fortunate accident.

I've posted more food dye pictures on my flickr page. There is also a group on flickr dedicated to food dye pictures 'Fun with Food Dye' which has some inspirational pictures.